Uttoxeter Online Magazine

I am sorry to see that the Cock Inn  pub at Beamhurst has closed.  My family- the Redferns- Father, mother, grandmother, grandfather were all tenants at this pub going back over fifty years.  It is a very old building and may at one time have brewed its own beer. For most of its life it was a Joule's pub, until taken over by Bass. In  my Dad and Grandad's days it was a very busy pub with most customers from Uttoxeter. Until about 1957 we were licensed for Ale, Beer and Porter. We had to apply later for a license to sell spirits. At that time beer was 1s 4d a pint and a single whisky double that price at half a crown. That would make a double whisky in todays money at around £7.00 !

The decline started with the new A50 by-passing the pub. When I was a teenager there, we had no electricity or water. Water was fetched daily from a spring in the lane opposite. There was a well in the pub yard but the water was not considered drinkable. That well is now under what was the pub bar serving area. Lighting was by paraffin lamps. We did not get power and water until around 1957. 

The age of the building can be gauged by the very narrow and old type of bricks.  It was a busy destination for many lorry drivers staying overnight from Lancashire often six a night staying there from Woodward's of Formby and Carrington and Dewhurst from Chorley, because with a 20 mph speed limit on lorries, they could not make a journey from Liverpool to Derby/Nottingham in one day.

My Aunties, brought up in the pub married two of the drivers around 1927 when they were carrying iron segments from Stanton's in Nottingham on Scammel chain driven lorries for the new Mersey tunnel.  It was a great place to grow up, and when my father wanted to retire in the 60's I did not want to take over the business because I was then at Goldsmith's Art School in London during the sixties, and moving from swinging London back to a hamlet of seven houses did not appeal to me and my wife, so the family link was broken. We were the longest serving and therefore oldest tenants of Joule's. I remember the brewery telephone number was Stone 1 ! 

The days before the drink driving laws often saw carloads of farmers going home late in a not too sober state.  On Sundays, farmers would come along about 10am, some having their hair cut by Fred Titley who lived there, and going home for Sunday dinner at about 12, the official opening time on Sundays. My Dad was Edgar Redfern, my Grandad Edmund Redfern.

Another pub gone forever, but few with as long a life as the Cock inn.

David Redfern
Kent