Jävla Getingbo! Jävla Getingar! *
- Stewart
- 47 minutes ago
- 4 min read
The reason why a particular bygone boozer ends up as subject matter in these pieces of drivel can vary quite a lot. The White Horse of Kent featured as a result of seeing an old photograph whilst others, like the post on Gorleston's Lifeboat Tavern and the one about the Pike and Eel in Cambridge, come from very early childhood memories. Regular supping venues from significant points in my life have accounted for those on the Highlands and the Bulkeley Arms.
For my previous post, about the lost Painters Arms in Greenwich, I managed to contrive a connection from painting a house in Sweden...
...and the state of my arms whilst doing so.
The story behind this post comes from an event which occurred when I was slapping the paint on. It was as I approached the left-hand end of the wall that I discovered that there was a wasp nest under the metal plate of the roof. Then Veronica, a vicious, vindictive Vespula vulgaris, made a bee-line – or should that be a wasp-line – for Mrs. Bygone Boozer, who was sitting about thirty yards away, and stung her on her left temple.
It's a bit of an understatement to say that she didn't respond too well to said event. Apart from making her face all blurry, its left side, all the way down to her neck, swelled severely, necessitating a visit to Akuten, as it's called in these parts.
We are not strangers to the A&E department in Östersund having had one ambulance admission with a head injury, as well as a walking wounded arrival with a subluxated shoulder, between us in the past. I find it amazing that an establishment which has to cater for the needs of around the same number of local inhabitants as Chesterfield's Royal Hospital can deal with folk so rapidly. There were just two other people waiting in A&E reception when we arrived. We left the place forty minutes later, after seeing both an opthamologist and an A&E doctor, with an assurance that there was no eye damage and that the large localised reaction should subside within a few days. We were told to return if it didn't. The last time that I was in Chesterfield's A&E, with a developing case of urosepsis, the place was heaving and I didn't see a medic for over two hours. But I digress.
Upon returning to the house, a decision was made to delay any further painting of that part of the wall for a week or so, until all activity around the nest had subsided. Which brings us to the appropriately-named subject of this post.
The Wasps Nest was constructed on Nab Lane in the Yorkshire town of Mirfield, in the late 1960s by Samuel Webster's, to serve the developing housing stock in the area. It was built on the site of a farm which went by that name, with the origin of the moniker dating back to the early part of the nineteenth century when it was applied to a group of cottages which housed a number of folk of a radical persuasion.
No flat-roofed estate pub here. The Wasps Nest was a pitched-roof structure, pretty typical of its era. There were a couple of similar pubs, built around the same time, on the new estate back in my home town. Both of those are now bygones too.
The pub opened on 1st December 1967, if the advertisement for bar staff in the Huddersfield Daily Examiner of 23rd November is to be believed...
...and the original landlord and landlady were Ken and Louise Murray. Leeds United footballers Billy Bremner and Jack Charlton, along with actress Dora Bryan marked the occasion by pushing over a large pile of pennies. Other hosts of this establishment through time, some with and others without surnames, gleaned from adverts and announcements in the local press included:
Margaret and Kenneth – Christmas 1978.
Margaret and Keith – Christmas 1979 (Same Margaret, different bloke? Different Margaret, different bloke? Same Margaret, same bloke, newspaper typo?)
Margaret and Keith – Christmas 1980 (I'm assuming same Margaret and same bloke for this one!)
Susie and Barry – Christmas 1981.
Gerald Ernest John Hogg – July 1986.
Mick and Ann Whiteley – November 1986. New tenancy.
Mick and Ann Whiteley – January 1995 Still there in article in Yorkshire Evening Post.
Tony and Suzanne – Christmas 1999. Under new management.
Bob and Ann Reid – October 2000. Marriage of their daughter.
Neil Huntington – June 2003. Applied for an entertainment licence.
Sod it! I'd rather be stung on the bum by Veronica then continue ploughing through more old newspapers. If anybody out there knows more, please let me know.
Eventually the Wasps Nest, like so many pubs of its ilk, became more valuable as a site for building on than as a site for selling ale from, and so closed in mid-2011. It stood empty for a number of years...
...before being demolished with houses being built on the site.
Back in Sweden, just as we were assured, the large localised reaction did subside within a few days, and the rest of the wall was painted. In fact it got two coats with no further vespine interruptions.
*F***ing wasp nest! F***ing wasps!
Alex McGregor's image is copyright and is reused under this licence.
The newspaper image is courtesy of the British Library Board/British Newspaper Archive.
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