The Bear at Home

Last week I showed a pub called the Brenford Taylor where I first met my wife, well this is the pub I met her the second time. The Bear at North Morton is now the only pub left in South & North Morton. The other pub which is in this village was the Queen Victoria and that closed many years ago. The Crown which is in South Morton kept going closeing and reopening a few times. At the moment it's closed again and I wonder if it will ever open again.The Bear at Home as it is now called has mananged to weather the storm's and is still going.

The pub has changed very little since the times I used to go to it though the inside has changed, I doubt they have the wild nights that used to happen here when I was younger. Less than a year after meeting my wife here again we got married and 33 years later we went back for lunch at the pub that brought us together.

Nuffield Place Tapestry

Lady Nuffield was quite adapt with here needlework and produced a few tapestry's like this at Nuffield Place

Taking Part in Monday Mural

Monday Morning

Got out the car at work Monday morning and saw this wonderful sky

 Lunchtime it all changed with threatening clouds coming in

January Blossom

The Clock House

The Clock house is a prominent feature just off what used to be the London to Bath road in Newbury. It replaced a previous feature which I will have to tell you about in another blog. The Clock house stands in the area known as Broadway which joins on to Northbrook Street and at one time was in an area called Speenhamland

When it was first built there was a public telephone behind the door where you could sit and talk to the person on the other end. There are also some stairs leading to the clock.

 

There is no longer a telephone inside but the place is still an important landmark in Newbury

 

 

The Goring Gap

 

 

The Thames flowing towards the Goring Gap taken from Goring Bridge

Roses are Red

Roses are Red

Francine was given a tiny stick, cut from a friend's rose bush in the hope it might grow.

Francine carefully inserted it into a pot of soil and crossed her fingers and toes.

She kept it in a sheltered spot and made sure it didn't dry out.

To her surprise a few buds appeared and within a few months it produced multiple scented blooms. All from a 12" stick!

Whoever would have guessed that growing roses could be so simple and so satisfying.

Have a go yourself. It really is that easy...

Roses are Red
Violets are Blue
I wrote this Blog
Just for you!

Thank you for your visit.

Have a great day.

x

Friendly Cat

So Cute

 

 

The Brenford Taylor

This is about one pub that has had three names and you could say starts with this place you see in the distance which was called the Railway Hotel. It was built when the Great Western Railway came through Moulsford and a station was built. A hotel was built near the Station and not far from an in called the Waterloo (you might remember it from anther blog). The idea being it gave travellers a place stay over while visiting the area or for relatives visiting Mental Asylum not far away. It was only open a few years before the station moved a mile or so down the line to Cholsey the Moulsford platform was demolished  and the Hotel was on it's own. It survived till the 1980s known as the Gables and as a Roadside café called the Downs Café and was used by truckers. There was a petrol station over to my right.

The name the Station hotel transferred to this building in Cholsey which would have been built the same time as the station which was not far away. The station had a branch like that went to Wallingford. The hotel was handy for people who also travelled to see relations at the Mental Asylum up the road. Not sure when it changed it's name but I remember it being called the Brenford Taylor and was a bub I started going in when I was 17. I worked there as a barman for a few years and was to meet my future wife here.  It was a famous pub at the time having over too different whisky's on sale, (used to be amusing watching the punters looking for an obscure one) and it was not unusual to have a lock in where the pub would be open till 2 0r 3 in the morning well after closing time. The landlord I worked for moved to Wallingford and the pub was renamed the Walnut tree. As you can see it did not say viable and was sold off for housing

 

The name Brenford Taylor came from the building you see on the left. That is the original Brenford Taylor in Cholsey 9Now Brenford House) and was on the other end of the Green called the Forty. I think the place shut down and the name moved to The old Station Hotel. The house you see in the photo still had the bar and some of the pub features in when I went in there back in the 1970's

 

So what became of the Brenford Taylor, well this is what it looks like now. It's gained an extension by the old lounge bar and the old stables over to the right made into a nice house. But I do wonder if it still has the Beer Cellar

Taking Part in Our World Tuesday

Half a Ghost Sign

Took this a few years ago while looking for the remains of a disused canal, the building bay have been one of the wharf houses near where the basin of the Wilt's & Berks canal used to be. The old advertising sign still hangs in though the one round the corner was cut in half by an extension to the building.

Taking part in Monday Mural