HISTORY
STILL SERVING BEER AFTER 600 YEARS - THE GEORGE INN, HIGHER CHEAP STREET By Barry Brock
Did you know that the red pillar box standing across Higher Cheap Street from The
George Inn was known as an ‘Anonymous’ box? It’s Victorian, but made without the usual royal cipher, crown and ‘Post Office’ written on it, and hence: ‘Anonymous’. The inn itself is much, much older, mentioned for the first time during the Wars of the Roses, when Henry VI was still king - this happened in 1459, when Richard Coot and John Osteler of The George Inn were accused in the Sherborne Hundred Court of overcharging for hay and oats; and then in 1462, with Edward IV now on the throne, ‘le Georgesyn’ is mentioned in a Sherborne almshouse account. The inn building we see today was built during the early sixteenth century, and is of similar age to the Julian next door, but much altered and modernised since then. In 1618, Sir Walter Raleigh’s servants and minor companions stayed at the George, while accompanying him to London for his appointment with the axe – James I could not deny the Spanish ambassador’s demands for Raleigh’s head, after Raleigh’s men had attacked a Spanish settlement (when he had sworn not to do so) during his second expedition to Venezuela.
Brought up in Somerset, but spending his latter years in Norfolk, James Woodforde was an eighteenth-century parson who kept a daily diary, which gives a unique insight into rural England at the time. Woodforde dined at the George on 21 July 1779, but it seems he was not impressed: ‘We dined at Sherborn at the George a shabby Inn and had a most miserable Dinner, about 2 Pound of boiled beef and a old Tame Rabbitt. I paid for my Dinner &c. at Sherbourne one shilling and sixpence. We then went on to Dorchester & there we had a Bottle of the famous Dorchester Beer & very good it was. For the Bottle of Beer I paid myself sixpence.’ The George has passed through many hands since then. Purchased by the Dorsetshire Brewery in Long Street, it was then sold to the Woolmington Brewery, and on to Eldridge, Pope of Dorchester, and finally to Marston’s. Landlords have come and gone too. Can anyone
remember Peter and Marge Pyman? Peter ran a tight house – no ‘roadies’ and no television except for sport. Harold Mayell followed the Pymans, a jolly chap, but he wasn’t cut out to be a landlord. And then there were all those that followed them. But now, thank goodness, things have improved since Woodforde’s ‘old Tame Rabbitt’. Unlike so many of Sherborne’s old pubs, the George is still open and selling beer, so do think about paying a visit. If you do go in, then be sure to look at some of the things that make it special: the original moulded ceiling beams (suggesting a high-status building), the stone fireplace, and the spice cupboard to one side. Oh, and don’t forget the beer. My thanks to Roger Marsh for his recollections of the George in the 1960s. Do you have any memories of Sherborne’s pubs that you’d like to share with me? Just send your email address to the editor of The Conduit and I’ll get back to you.
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