Pedalling Back Through Time.
- Stewart
- Sep 10
- 5 min read
Updated: Oct 13
It's hard to believe that it's almost six weeks since the last post, but I've been tripping. No indolealkylamines, phenylethylamines, arylcycloalkylamines or even cannabinoids for me. I've just had a lot of trips. There's been the inordinate number of trips to the hospital, but there's also been the "There's a Big Wedding Anniversary to Celebrate Trip", the "There's a Big Birthday to Celebrate Trip" and the "It's Time to Look After the Furry Felines Again" trip.
For the Big Birthday one, Mrs Bygone Boozer and I took our bikes all of a couple of hours away, for a few days of exploring the lanes around Belvoir Castle. Well, it was only a couple of hours away for me as I was driving, but she decided that she'd pedal the sixty-odd miles to where we were staying.
I managed to overshoot the drive to the cottage and had to turn around and drive back up the hill I'd just descended. Doing so caused a flicking through of the file index in my hippocampus and out popped a memory from twenty-two years ago. That stirring of the index cards was caused by the sight of this layby.
Over two decades ago I had pedalled along this road. It was part of the course for one of the rounds of the national time trial series and the reason that I remember the layby so well is that I threw up in it!
I recall having been off work on the Thursday and Friday, but with me only being able to ride six of that season's series' events, and needing six results to count, I went to ride it anyway. Whilst not performing brilliantly, things weren't going too badly until I left Harby. Heading southeast along Waltham Lane the road starting pointing upwards, getting steeper and steeper and I was getting slower and slower. I eventually stopped in that layby where my gastric contents enriched the soil nutrients. A few following competitors asked if I was OK as they passed, seemingly oblivious to the gradient. I eventually remounted and completed the course and managed to garner enough points from the event to get me a top ten series placing at the end of the season.
There was to be no racing up Harby Hill for Mrs BB or me on this visit, although we did have to ascend partway way up it at the end of each day. This pedalling was to be much more leisurely. And flatter!
One morning we fancied a trip out to the former basin of the Grantham Canal at Hickling for a spot of brunch.
Passing fields of sunflowers, if we ignored the rain and the grey sky we could very well have been in Provence.
Arriving in Hickling, the Plough wasn't open but the Old Wharf Tearoom was. The Americano was great and the big breakfast cob even better.
Our return trip was almost a simple reverse of our outward route except that we rode through the village of Hose rather than bypassing it. In doing so we passed this building.
Very bygone boozer-looking, it turns out to have been, until fairly recently, the Black Horse.
The first reference to the pub that I've been able to find is in the 1849 Post office directory which lists James Pears as being at the Old Black Horse.
The census of 1841 does list a publican in the village, one William Hourd, but fails to name the hostelry and I've been unable to establish whether he was at the Black Horse or the still serving Rose and Crown.
James Pears was still there in 1851...
...and 1861...
...but by 1871 John Moulds and wife Elizabeth were in residence.
It wasn't long before the Black Horse was back in the hands of the Pears family and James and Hannah's son Thomas was running the place in both 1881...
...and 1891.
Thomas died in October 1895, leaving his widow Mary to run the Black Horse...
...and after she died in 1903 her son, named after his father, became the third generation of Pears to run the place.
Or did he?
The 1911 census puts Thomas jr. in one of the village's pubs but doesn't name it. The other pub was in the hands of the Swain family, but that, helpfully, wasn't named either.
The following year John Swain is shown to be at the Black Horse in Kelly's directory and it doesn't mention Thomas Pears at all, the Rose and Crown being occupied by one Thomas Hart.
So, who was at the Black Horse in 1911? Did Thomas Pears briefly take over from his mother with the Swains then moving from the Rose and Crown into the Black Horse or did he briefly run the Rose and Crown himself? Don't you just love a mystery?
What isn't mysterious is who continued to run the Black Horse. John Swain was still there in 1928.
John eventually retired and moved, with his sister Bertha, to a house on The Green. The Black Horse continued to serve the villagers for another eighty years. Francis Frith have this image of the pub from around 1955 on their site...
...and at some time it must've been a Home Ales house...
...but it finally closed its doors in 2009 and was converted into a house. There is, however, a reminder of its former life hanging above the front door.
Edit October 2025: I've stumbled across this picture of the Black Horse when it was open in May 2008. Thanks to Dayoff171 for allowing me to use it here.
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