Jimmy Continued to Pour Pints Wylie Could. #2
- Stewart
- Jun 5
- 4 min read
It's been over five weeks since I posted the last piece of drivel on these pages, but with a gap in the seemingly innumerable medical appointments Mrs Bygone Boozer and I have had a trip away to do a bit of pedalling. Whilst the likes of southern France and Spain, and especially the island of Majorca, are popular early-season venues for the majority of British cyclists venturing abroad we prefer northern Sweden. OK, it's not really northern Sweden, more like approximately two-thirds of the way up Sweden. Its lack of serious hills made it the ideal place for my first outdoor post-hand operation ride...
...as my reduction in grip strength for braking would be unlikely to be of major concern. Additionally, with its clean air and clear blue skies it's just a refreshing place to be...
...and with the roads being virtually pothole-free there'd be no unexpected sudden jolts to jar my palm.
Whilst Jämtland may not have the temperatures of Spain or the south of France, it doesn't have the traffic density either. This was one of the main east-west routes in the region, the equivalent of the UK's A66 or M8, at about 2pm on a weekday.
But we're back now, and so are both the blog and Jimmy Wylie.
The three of you who are regular readers may well recall we first met Jimmy in the Star in Gorleston and that when it closed he moved on to Upper Sheringham's Red Lion. You may also remember that the Red Lion suffered the same fate as the Star, and that Jimmy had moved on again well before then. This time it was to the King's Head in Barford, a village a handful of miles to the west of Norwich. And guess what! Yes, it is also now a bygone boozer.
The King's Head was situated on Chapel Street and is marked on the 1905 revision of the 25" Ordnance Survey map...
...and Jimmy was in residence in the late 1930s, as recorded in the 1939 Register...
...although the pub itself isn't named in either of these documents.
A century before Jimmy's occupancy, blacksmith William Blyth was running the King's Head...
...and he continued to do so for another thirty-odd years, appearing in the 1871 census...
...before retiring and going to live with his daughter, Mary, not a million miles away on The Common.
However, the pub continued in the family for a while with William's son Edward acquiring the licence, as well as acquiring an e for his surname.
Edward remained there until the end of the decade when into the inn moved threshing machine maker, John Worrell.
He wasn't there for long as in 1892 William Mace was once more carrying on the pub's association with blacksmithery, blacksmithing or whatever the correct term is for thwacking red-hot lumps of ferrous metal with a larger lump of ferrous metal.
Whilst the Blyth family were running the pub it was owned by Cann and Clarke's Wymondham Brewery but in May 1894, a couple of years into William Mace's tenancy, it was sold to Morgan's Brewery of Norwich.
The pub's next change of ownership was to be its undoing. In September 1961 Morgan's Brewery went into liquidation and was taken over jointly by fellow Norwich Brewers Bullard's and Steward & Patterson. The brewery itself was sold to Watney Mann and the pub estate divided up between them. Many pubs were deemed to be superfluous to their new owner's needs and were closed. The King's Head was so deemed by Steward and Patterson and closed the following month. The former pub is now in residential use.
That was the fate of the King's Head, but what about Jimmy Wylie? After his time at the King's Head he was later to be found at the Brickmaker's Arms in Freethorpe. And guess what. Watch this space!
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.
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Brilliant research as usual.