Consigned to History.
- Stewart
- 4 hours ago
- 6 min read
Early one Saturday morning in mid-January 1978, around this time of year, I set off from Gorleston in Dad's white Bedford HA van for 'The Smoke'. The details of quite where I was headed the intervening years have eroded away, but it was somewhere in Acton. The details of quite what I was collecting have similarly vanished. Maybe floor tiles or possibly stuff for a suspended ceiling installation. I do remember, though, that I had to pick up the now forgotten load by lunchtime, before whatever and wherever the particular warehouse was closed for the weekend.
It was still fairly early on a Saturday morning as I approached the capital so I decided that I'd drive through the city rather than take the North Orbital. Certainly no M25 in those days. Now, my knowledge of the A to Z was limited to a few of the major roads through the city along with a few of the less major ones around Shepherd's Bush and Hammersmith. In view of this I had memorised a sequence of a few major landmarks and thought that I'd work my way across London in a point to point manner.
Marble Arch, Hyde Park, Bayswater Road, Holland Park, Uxbridge Road. I made it with relatively little difficulty and having collected the goods, whatever they happened to have been, I set off for home. Not straight home, for my navigation through London wasn't that good. Besides, in my possession was an envelope containing a cheque made out to the former inamorata for the amount of money she'd leant to see me through the student days. As Ralph McTell, a shared musical hero of ours back then, sang:
And I'll send you back the money
But not the love you lent.
I could never pay no interest on that loan.
After all, Shepherd's Bush was only a couple of miles away.
I'd intended to simply post the envelope through the letterbox but having climbed the steps to her front door something inside me made me press the doorbell. A long and insistent press. Having done so it then occurred to me that perhaps, at 10am on a Saturday morning, it wasn't the wisest decision that I'd ever made. Did I really fancy coming face to face with a new beau? After about a minute, with there having been no response, I started to feel a little relieved and was about to push the envelope through the letterbox when the door slowly opened and there she stood in her dressing gown, sporting her best ever bed-hair. No, it hadn't been one of my greatest decisions, but not for any reason that I'd anticipated, although looking back it's one that I really should have considered. The poor girl had only got into bed an hour and a half earlier having worked for ten hours on a surgical ward the previous night.
Sitting opposite each other at the kitchen table, each with a mug of coffee, I handed her the envelope. She opened it, took out the cheque, burst out laughing and threw it back at me. It fluttered to the floor.
"You ******* nutter!"
With that I got up and left. At least this time we parted with the pair of us bearing smiles. So much better than my previous departure through that front door which had taken me to Euston Station via the Railway Tavern. I can't recall the cheque ever being cashed.
Now, what's all this rejection and unrequited love stuff got to got to do with anything? Well, on my trip to Acton I wouldn't have been very far away from this place. I may even have driven past it for all I know...
...and, besides, it provides a very wordy and appropriate introduction for, just like the former inamorata, the Goldsmiths Arms in Acton has also been consigned to history.
When I acquired the above image of a boozer I was reliably informed that it was in the Suffolk village of Acton. I was pretty sure that it wasn't. It just didn't have the feel of rural Suffolk. Besides, with its population of about fifteen, if you include the sheep and chickens, the still-serving Crown would be more than capable of meeting the inhabitants' needs. Additionally, I'd have been very surprised to find that Sich Ales had been for sale around the Sudbury area.
Whilst brewers Sich and Co. had a pub in Brentford, the majority of their houses were in west London – in areas such as Hammersmith, Hanwell, Chiswick and, err, Acton. Now where have I come across that name before?
The pub was in existence by at least 1821 when it was named in an advert for an auction in the Morning Advertiser of the 18th March 1821.
The landlord at that time may well have been one Thomas Black. If he wasn't there in 1821 he was certainly in residence when the representative of Pigot's Directories passed through the area five years later.
Various directories and census records throw up a rapidly changing list of licensees:- A. Holden, Thomas Wheeler, Samuel Fisher, Samuel Wright, John Peel...
John Peel died in the pub on 29th June 1865 and the Morning Advertiser of 29th September records the transfer of the licence to his widow, Elizabeth.
Elizabeth didn't stay at the Goldsmiths on her own for long, for by the following year it was being run by John Bowyer, according to the 1866 Post Office directory...
...although later directories and censuses record his surname as Boyer. John Boyer, just like his namesake Mr Peel, also died in the pub, in 1889, and it very much looks as if he was replaced by William Jackson.
After William Jackson we have Walter Kates, Frederick Lightfoot, Catherine Lightfoot... Yes, just like the two Johns, Frederick died and his widow took over the licence, as was noted in the Middlesex and Surrey Express of 26th September 1902.
Now the observant amongst you may well have noticed that the pic of the pub further up the page doesn't look like one that was built by 1821 and you'd be right. In 1908, the licence was transferred from Catherine to Alexander Sich, as reported in the Morning Advertiser of 7th August...
...and an application had been made earlier that year to rebuild the Goldsmiths Arms. In 1908 it would've looked as it does on the extreme left in the photograph below.
This building was eventually demolished and a new one, designed by Thomas Henry Nowell Parr, was constructed in 1910-11. In 1920, Sich & Co. Ltd. was acquired by Isleworth Brewery and the picture below shows the pub now bearing the latter's livery.
The Goldsmiths continued to serve the people of East Acton for around a century and it looks as if nothing much had changed when Neil Clifton took this shot in 2015.
By this time the pub had come into the hands of Greene King who were operating it as one of their Flaming Grill outlets when, in 2017, they closed it.
Two years later, planning permission was granted to build flats for the Metropolitan Thames Valley Housing Association on the site and demolition started in 2020. All that remained by the end of the year was the pub's sign.
That, too, now has gone and where the Goldsmiths Arms stood for over two hundred years we have these flats. I wonder how long they'll be standing at 130 East Acton Lane.
It seems that, with this post and those on Gorleston's Highlands and Links Hotel, the losses on Bangor's High Street and on Goldhawk Road in Shepherds Bush, together with the post about the Wherry at Langley, that I could be writing a bildungsroman in serialised format. If so, look out for an offering on the aforementioned Railway Tavern. It may well be coming soon.
Neil Clifton's image is copyright and reused under this licence.
The newspaper images are courtesy of the British Newspaper Archive (www.britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk).
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