Late Days: Alehouses & a Spook House
When the article Early Days: Prelude to Spring by Albert B. Knapp MD and Ruth Oratz MD in the 53/2 issue of Viewfinder documented a spring season passed under Covid-19 conditions, I wondered what I might do to document an English late autumn in which our freedoms were still restricted by measures intended to limit the spread of the disease.
England lacks the open spaces of the US, so while Albert and Ruth have a property through which a river flows, the only thing that might flow into my property would be the occasional rainwater runoff from the car parking area in front of my garage. I would need to look further afield for my subject matter, and since I’m not a motorist this would have to be found in the village of Roydon where I live.
Located some 19 miles north of London, Roydon dates back to at least the 11th century, when it was known as ‘Ruindune’, but had acquired its current name by 1467. When I settled there in 1981, this village made up of only three principal streets and around half-a-dozen side streets had no less than four drinking establishments (‘bars’ in US parlance, but ‘pubs’ to the British).
Located along the village’s High Street, all but one of these were in buildings several centuries old, and three were known to some local people not by their official names, but as the ‘Top House’, ‘Middle House’ and ‘Bottom House’ respectively – references to their locations on the street. Although the anti-Covid regulations announced by the United Kingdom (UK) government temporarily closed all pubs in the summer of 2020, and again in November, these premises seemed suitable subjects for my camera.
As its original title of ‘eala-hus’ suggests, the concept of the alehouse dates back to Anglo- Saxon times. These establishments seem to have been popular, and may even have become a social problem – in the year 965 the English King Ēadgār the Peaceable ordered that each village in his realm should have only a single alehouse.
The term ‘alehouse’ is long obsolete, having been followed by the terms ‘inn’, ‘tavern’, and the current ‘public house’, though in the 19th century the latter gave way to the abbreviated form of ‘pub’. Some English pubs can trace their history back to the 14th century, although most if not all have been rebuilt at a later date. Roydon’s White Hart (known locally as the ‘Middle House’) is less than a minute’s walk from my front door. While some parts date back to the 15th century, the main section is a long timber-framed building, perhaps of 17th- century origin. By 1789 it had become an alehouse.
A building at the top of the High Street had been used intermittently as a drinking establishment since 1671 or even earlier. It was replaced – probably in the 18th century – by The White Horse (the ‘Top House’), a timber-framed building which acquired its current brick front during the 19th century. Although the pub was converted for residential use several years ago, its sign can still be seen over the door.
The New Inn (the ‘Bottom House’) is an early 17th-century timber-framed building recorded in 1769 as being a drinking establishment. Built on the site of a late medieval house, it incorporates the south cross wing of the older building. For a time, this establishment seems to have also met local needs of a non-alcoholic sort. On 11 August 1890, Theophilus Blades, publican of The New Inn, appeared before local magistrates charged with having presented unlicensed stage plays on his premises. (Until 1968, UK law required official censorship of stage plays.)
Originally known as The Temple Inn, a name that recalls how part of Roydon parish was once owned by the 12th-14th century Knights Templar military order, then later by the Knights Hospitaller, The Crusader was Roydon’s youngest pub. Built early in the 19th century, it originally had to pay a seventh of its annual income to the Lord of the Manor each Michaelmas (29 September). The Crusader was closed with the introduction of the 2020 anti-Covid regulations, and its future is now uncertain.
In the 19th century the village had a fifth alehouse in the form of The Plough. Probably built around 1600, this is now used as a residence, and has been renamed Plough Cottage. Another named The Eagle existed on the outskirts of the village. Thought to be of 17th century origin, it is now a five-bedroom residence named Eagle House.
During the Second World War, the clientele of the Roydon pubs is likely to have included what a small rural community might have regarded as rather strange individuals. The man indirectly responsible for this was British wartime prime minister Winston Churchill. “Set Europe ablaze”, he had commanded in 1940, and the clandestine organisation tasked with doing this was the then recently-formed Special Operations Executive (SOE). Cre- ated to carry out espionage, sabotage, and raiding operations, the SOE grew to the point where it had more than 70 facilities in the UK. These included Briggens House, an early 18th century building incorporating Tudor foundations, and located in extensive grounds on the outskirts of Roydon.
After being taken over by government order, this was initially used as the ‘STS 38 Polish Training Section’ for an elite unit of special-operations paratroopers from the Polish Army in exile. Records show that 316 personnel – including one woman – were parachuted into occupied Poland as secret agents. It was a dangerous business – 103 of them were killed in action, executed after capture, or died in crashes.
By 1941 Briggens House had become ‘Station XIV’, the location of the SOE’s False Docu- ment Section, a secret unit whose personnel included convicted counterfeiters and forgers who had been released from British prisons so that their illicit skills could be exploited. By 1945, this unconventional team had created more than quarter of a million forged documents such as identity cards, work permits, and ration books that SOE agents could use when operating in occupied countries. These fake documents were of high quality, and the Germans had problems in spotting them. On one occasion, the Germans introduced a new form of ration book (presumably as an anti-faking measure), but by the end of the first day of its use, Briggens House had already created its own version.
Station XIV also printed fake Polish banknotes that were dropped into occupied Poland in an attempt to disrupt the economy, and had even created a German passport for Adolf Hitler. Now preserved in the UK’s National Archives, this document may have been devised as a training exercise to demonstrate the unit’s forging skills, but shows its creators’ sense of humour. Hitler’s occupation is listed as ‘painter’, and his distinguishing feature is described as a ‘little moustache’. One forged stamp made on its pages is the red letter ‘J’ that indicated that the bearer had been classified as Jewish, while another is a visa that gave permission to enter Palestine, which was under British control at that time!
Given that wartime prices were about 1/50 of their present-day equivalent, buying beer in the Roydon pubs in those days would in most cases have been a transaction involving coins rather than banknotes. This was probably a good thing – while we can be fairly confident that any banknotes used by local people would have been printed by the Bank of England, the same perhaps could not be said for any banknotes proffered by Station XIV personnel. Some just might have been highly unofficial and unauthorised products of Briggens House.
Given the stresses of wartime, one suspects that ‘cloak and dagger’ types from Briggens House and even some of the Roydon villagers might not have been the best-behaved of pub clients, but not far from The New Inn are what were once Roydon’s potential solutions to bad behaviour or petty crime – the village lockup and stocks.
Built around 1828, the lockup is a small wooden shed with a flat roof, lockable double doors, and slatted vent to admit fresh air, while the stocks are an example of a traditional instrument of punishment that was used from medieval to early modern times. The miscreant’s ankles were placed in cutouts between the upper and lower wooden boards. Now immobilised, he could expect to be jeered and mocked, or pelted with refuse.
An English law of 1351 required that stocks should be available in every town and village, and devices of this type remained in service for the next five centuries. The last official instances of their use in the UK were in 1872, but stocks were still used in rural communities for some time after that date. Some 50 years ago a then-elderly Roydon parishioner recalled having seen a man being punished in the village stocks some time around 1885.
These potential subjects having been chosen, it was time to plan my picture-taking. Much though I enjoyed the imagery created by Albert’s 90mm Thambar, this is a lens that I’ve never had any desire to own, and given that I’m in my late 70s and semi-retired, it’s not one that I could easily afford. But I wondered whether an alternative and relatively inexpensive route to obtaining soft-focus imagery for my project might be possible. Although Zeiss no longer offers its legendary Softar soft-focus filter, the company still supplies the trans- parent component formerly used in this device to German filter manufacturers B+W and Heliopan, who install these into their own mountings.
While the Thambar achieves its soft-focus effect by exploiting undercorrected spherical aberration, Softar-type filters consist of a transparent disk with a series of small hemispher- ical protrusions on one surface. A portion of the incoming light passes through what is essentially a clear filter, and creates a normal image on the film or sensor, while the rest passes through the protrusions and is defocused. According to aficionados of Softar-type filters, the end result is a combination of a sharp image and scattered light that cannot be mimicked by software-based manipulations.
The effect created by these filters depends on the focal length and aperture setting of the lens to which it is fitted, but is much milder than that available from the Thambar. Using too short a focal length or to small an aperture (and in the worst case, a combination of both) can create sufficient depth of field to begin to upset the effect of the filter’s surface structure.
The issue of Viewfinder containing the article ‘Early Days’ had reached me at the end of September, but I was not able to acquire a B+W Soft Pro filter until mid-October. For photographers in the upper northern latitudes, the approach of winter often means poor weather, weak low-angle sunlight, and long harsh shadows. I had to wait though many days of heavy overcast or rain before getting several days of winter sunshine, and one when the sun was just visible through thin cloud.
The pubs and former pubs are all located directly on the street, and since the latter are fairly narrow, I had to rely on my Leitz-era 28mm f/5.6 Summaron and 35mm f/2.8 Summaron. Both have front elements of small diameter – about 5mm and 12mm respectively – and my limited experience with the Soft Pro suggests that the effect of the filter are minimal with the 28mm lens, but more visible with the 35mm. But even when the filter is used with lenses of greater diameter, the resulting softness is much less than that from a Thambar.
Being close to London, and having a direct rail link to that city, Roydon has long been a ‘commuter village’. The High Street tends to be fairly quiet except when local commuters are heading to and from the railway station, children are making their daily trips to and from the village school, and when the business community from the local area arrive for lunch in the village pubs. But during the anti-Covid lockdowns imposed by the UK government, few people could be seen.
Locked gates and crumbling gatehouses are evidence that after operating as a hotel in the late 20th century, Briggens House – once used as a ‘spook house’ by Britain’s clandestine Special Operations Executive (SOE) – has now fallen out of use
Gone also were the long nose-to-tail processions of cars for whose owners our village is just part of their daily route between home and a distant workplace. Stepping out onto the road in order to obtain the best vantage point for a photograph would normally be unwise, but a sharp reduction in traffic through the village caused by the anti-Covid measures made it practical.
My photographic outings into near-deserted streets with closed pubs brought to mind Samuel Pepys’ diary entry for 16 August 1665 recording the effects of the Great Plague then affecting the city of London. “But, Lord! how sad a sight it is to see the streets empty of people… and about us two shops in three, if not more, generally shut up.”