In my previous post I waffled on about the no longer standing King's Head in Tideswell, and Thomas Needham's half-century of occupancy. Shortly after having my right upper arm filled with some of Moderna's Spikevax XBB.1.5 at the village's pharmacy, another needle assaulted the one on my left side, infusing it with this season's flavour of quadrivalent flu vaccine. Having received the second jab I wandered around the village for a bit in order to get a photograph of the pub's one-time location. In doing so I passed this sign mounted above the green door...
...of this building.
The fact that it was a bygone boozer didn't come as a surprise for it was marked as such on the Ordnance Survey map of 1897 that you would've seen if you've read my previous post, which is linked to above. Here's the map again, with the blue pointy thing marking the location of the King's Head. Note the second inn marked just across the road from it.
The Grade II listed building was built in the early nineteenth century and one of its early occupiers was John Hudson.
John died in 1840 and the pub was taken over by his niece Sarah...
...who ran the place for over twenty years until she retired.
And there the Hudson connection with the Bull's Head ended, as in 1871 John Furness, and his family, was in residence
But I was wrong. The connection continued. In1870 John Furness had married a young widow, innkeeper Mary Hudson. Her previous husband had also been called John, and happened to have been Sarah's nephew. I'm presuming that Mary and John number one had taken the place over from Sarah. Anyway, the Furness family were there until John number two's death in 1909.
With that I'm pretty certain that the Hudson connection did finally end. I can find no link between the Hudsons and George Denston who was there in 1911.
Below is a photograph of the pub taken shortly after this time. I can't decipher the licensee's name on the picture, but it must be post 1911/12 as Weston Bagshaw was living in Lancashire prior to, and for, the 1911 census...
...but appears in Kelly's 1912 Derbyshire directory in Tideswell, along with George.
Here's a view taken from a similar angle today.
By the time that the 1920s arrive a familiar name appears on the scene. Remember Thomas Needham from the King's Head? Well, his son William is now living across the road from his childhood home. He's not new to the pub game having previously been at the Railway Hotel in Millers Dale (a bygone boozer itself) and the George, just along the road from the Bull's Head.
William was still there in 1932...
...but eventually moved out, crossing the road to return to his roots in the King's Head, where he died in 1936.
By the start of World War II James Makin had moved in and was recorded as being there in Kelly's 1941 edition, before leaving to do his bit.
I'm unsure as to quite when the Bull's Head died, but James died in 1944. On the fifth of September. In Italy, where he is buried in the War Cemetery at Gradara. Quite a distance from either Tideswell or his native Bolton. In the run up to Remembrance Day it's probably appropriate to remind ourselves that there are greater losses to mourn than that of an odd village pub or two.
Thanks to Pam Olawumi for the photograph of her uncle, James Makin.
The Ordnance Survey map extract has been reproduced with the permission of the National Library of Scotland under the terms of this licence.
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