After last week’s piece courtesy of the temperance society, this week we stay with drink, and an article about the many, many pubs in Rickmansworth once upon a time.

In fact, in 1875, there were so many taverns in the town that “Middlemarch” author George Eliot, no less, wrote there was “a public house for every six other houses.” George (or Mary Ann Evans, to give her real name) lived in the town that year while she was writing Daniel Deronda.

Anyway, this article from the Watford Observer of January 23, 1959, tells all:

"Back in the days when our story starts, Rickmansworth was a noted ‘beer town’ with Salter’s Brewery at the eastern approaches to the town a tall monument to its greatness, and the scent of malt and hops heavy in the air on brewing days.

"Alas, for the disciples of John Barleycorn, beer drinking is not what it was in Rickmansworth and the town is but a pale ghost of its former greatness in this respect.

"Time was when there were 17 public houses in the High Street and Church Street alone. Most of them were beer and cider houses and the landlords supplemented their earnings by finding other jobs as well. It must be borne in mind, too, that at that time, practically anybody could hold a licence and use one of the rooms in his house or cottage as a bar.

"In the British Museum there is a record of a famous “pub crawl” by a 17th Century writer, John Taylor, who called at The Bell, Rickmansworth. The date was 1636 and the licensee was Sara Marsh.

"Here is a very old building which still has its aura of the good old days. It was famous during the 1880s for its hot sausages which were on sale on Saturdays – two sausages and a dip in the mustard pot, price three ha’pence. Beer was twopence a pint.”

At the time [January 1959], what had been The Bell was used as picturesque offices by Messrs Swannell and Sly, the estate agents. The building was demolished in the 1960s.

Many of the many pubs in the town were closed over the years  (in fact, in 1912, local magistrate Dr Henderson closed 14 inns in ‘one fell swoop’) and some of them are mentioned as this 1959 article continues.

“The names of other dear departed public houses in High Street were: The George (now a toy shop); The Queen’s (now a fish shop); The Forester’s, which used to stand at the corner of Station Road; The Sugar Loaves, opposite Woolworth’s stores; The Cross Keys, next to the old school which is now the offices of the Siegwart Precast Flooring Company; The Prince of Wales, opposite the present Rates Department of Rickmansworth Urban District Council.

“In Church Street were The Three Horseshoes; The Chequers and The Boot. Lost to Batchworth were The Anchor of Hope and The Queen’s Head, and on Woodcock Hill, the Prince of Wales.

“At Mill End, there are memories of six former hostelries: The Golden Cross, The Spotted Dog, Four Horseshoes, Red Lion, The Plough, and The Half Moon.

“Croxley Green lost three ‘ports of call’: The Plough and the George and Dragon, both on Scots Hill, and The Queen’s Head in New Road. Down in West Hyde there used to be a public house called The Greyhound and there was a Cross Keys at Horne Hill.

“This is a sad story for the beer drinking fraternity, but the saddest aspect of it surely was that day when, in one fell swoop, 14 of the public houses were closed down. For many years afterwards, the name of Dr Henderson, the true blue magistrate, was mentioned with awe and, in some cases, a spit into the sawdust in the remaining pubs."