It was July 1970. Great Yarmouth Borough was tiptoeing towards the twentieth century and the whole of the education system in the town was becoming coeducational. From September of that year the town's boys Grammar School and the High School for girls were to become mixed sex establishments, with some pupils swapping schools at the start of the new academic year. One of the events put in place to ease this transition was that the schools held a combined sports day at the town's athletics track rather than have two separate events on the schools' own playing fields.
With twice the normal number of events having to be catered for a lot had to be completed before the big day came. Mine were amongst those and so I was left free to associate with those with more rounded forms than my usual classmates. One of my usual classmates introduced me to one of those more rounded forms – I'll call her Kim – who just happened to be his next door neighbour. Waist length blonde hair and piercing blue eyes, coupled with teenage testosterone turmoil, meant I was entranced.
Much of the month of August was spent at Gorleston's open air swimming pool with mates Paul, Ian, Dave, Rich and Steve in the company of some more rounded forms in the shape of Christine, Sue... and Kim. For once I wasn't too bothered that the new academic year was fast approaching for I'd be moving to the former girls High School where Sue and Christine would be in my new, mixed, class. Of course, Kim would be there too. Except that she wouldn't. As the holiday came to a close she informed us all that she was moving to Ashwellthorpe with her family.
Ashwellthorpe? Where the hell was Ashwellthorpe? I did eventually find out where it was and I even went to the village, but that wasn't until 1977 when I popped into the White Horse on a couple of lunchtimes whilst visiting farms in the area.
Dating back to at least 1715 according to CAMRA's WhatPub website, the White Horse was to be found on The Street in Ashwellthorpe. The Street seems an appropriate name for the only road which runs through what is essentially a linear settlement.
It was certainly in operation by around 1740 as when Christopher Browne died in Ashwellthorpe in 1794 he was described thus: '...for upwards of 50 years the master of the White Horse...'.
If we now jump forward around half a century we find that Rosamond Colman is in residence at the pub.
Rosamond was a widow, her husband Robert having died three years earlier. Robert had been her second husband. Her original marriage was to a Christopher Browne. This wasn't the Christopher Browne mentioned earlier, but he may well have been his son, or even grandson, with the pub passing through different generations of the family after each death.
Whether this was the case or not, the White Horse had left the Browne family's hands by 1845 when White's directory lists, among the traders in the village, Robert Elliott as a victualler at the White Horse.
The Elliott dynasty ran until 1891. Robert was there in 1851...
... and was licensee when the pub passed from Weston's ownership into that of fellow Norwich Brewers Young, Crawshay and Young in 1864. He remained there until his death in 1878. After he'd been buried in the village churchyard his widow Elizabeth took up the reins and was listed in Kelly's publication of the following year.
Elizabeth joined Robert below the turf of All Saints in 1888 whereupon their son John maintained the Elliott presence at the White Horse. He was there for the census in 1891...
...but had been replaced by the time that Kelly's directory was published the following year.
The tale is that John Elliott was given notice to quit after a case of drunkenness and assault. His replacement was another John. John Allcock.
With the possible Browne/Colman connection lasting for around a century, and with the Elliotts being there for about half that time, landlords now started to come and go with somewhat more regularity. Whilst John Allcock was still there in 1896...
...he'd gone five years later and James Tyrrell was pouring the pints.
This is how the pub looked from around James's time in charge. It seems like he might just have had his chimneys swept.
James Tyrrell left in 1908 and the landlords continued to come and go over the next century and a bit, the final one leaving in 2019. The White Horse disappeared into residential use, although a couple of signs of its former role remain to this day.
That's the fate of the White Horse, but what about Kim? Well, we did meet up again. At a school disco in the November where I dad-danced with her – I was well ahead of my time, dad-dancing in my mid-teens – to, amongst other things, T Rex's Ride a White Swan and, rather more closely, to A Whiter Shade of Pale by Procol Harum. What of her now? I've no idea. For all I know she may well have joined the group inhabited by Ian, Paul, Sue and Dave and, just like the White Swan, no longer be with us.
What's caused these memories to surface from deep in my cerebral cortex where they normally reside? A couple of recent events have reminded me of just how transient and ephemeral our time here is. Various long-forgotten events from the past have surfaced and some may well feature in future posts. Don't worry, there'll be no Deborah James style blog but there may be some random geographic and temporal jumping around in some of the up-coming posts.
The Ordnance Survey map extract is copyright and has been reproduced with the permission of the National Library of Scotland under the terms of this CC BY licence. J. Thomas's image is copyright and is reused under this one.
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