Drinking In The Past

Rosemary Collins meets the researcher uncovering the forgotten history of Lincolnshire’s pubs

Last year, Lincolnshire County Council caused a stir by advertising for a researcher to visit the pubs of the Lincolnshire coast as part of a year-long history project funded by Historic England.

“My mum saw the vacancy advertised in the local press and said, ‘This sounds like a job that’s just up your street’,” reveals Marc Knighton, who studied art, history and historical architecture at university and worked at an auction house before becoming the project officer for ‘Inns on the Edge’. “I don’t know whether she was referring to my research and academic abilities, or to my drinking abilities. But I’m hoping that it was the former and not the latter.”

My mum said, ‘This sounds like a job that’s just up your street’

However, ‘Inns on the Edge’ is about much more than having a pint at work. In fact, Marc says his research starts “in a dark room with lots of coffee”.

‘Inns on the Edge’ is scrutinising the 50 miles of coastline from Boston to Grimsby. This area covers 53 parishes in total. At the start of the project, researchers estimated that there were about 150 current and former pubs in the area – they now think that the true figure is closer to 300.

Marc begins by researching the pubs using local and national archives. “It basically involves getting to grips with old maps and trade directories such as Kelly’s directories, White’s directories and the old Post Office directories, looking at that documentary evidence and putting it into a formula that people can understand. I then chart that onto Ordnance Survey maps, so we can see where the pubs existed previously and where they exist today.”

The next step is to visit the present-day pubs, talking to landlords and patrons: “We give them the website address where they can follow the project, and we also give them a ‘memory book’ – a notebook to keep at the bar where regulars and other people who go into the pub can record what they know about the place. They can keep those books for future generations.”

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One of his recent trips, to The Red Cow Inn in Fishtoft, showed the power of pubs to uncover memories of days gone by. The pub’s owners told him a story they heard from a customer in his 90s, who remembered when the pub used to have a carpenter’s shop at the front.

“One of the main businesses of a carpenter back then was making coffins. They would stand up the dead to have a drink.”

The pubs that Marc is researching are all on the coastline, but they’re on the edge in another sense, because many pubs around the UK face the threat of closure following the pandemic.

“These are heritage assets that are at risk of closing and being lost for good. Once that happens you lose the muchloved memories that were formed there, and all of the uncovered stories and history. So my job is to try to safeguard some of that for future generations.” The results of the project will be shared in an exhibition that will take place later this year at the North Sea Observatory in Chapel St Leonards, which will then go on tour along the coast.

“We hope to share the stories and the histories that we’ve been able to document and all of the people that we’ve met along the coast, and showcase some of the pubs’ histories that no one is really aware of,” Marc says.

GET INVOLVED

Inns On The Edge w www.letstalk.lincolnshire.gov.uk/inns-on-the-edge

Visit the project’s website to read Marc’s blog and share your own memories and stories. You can also upload old and recent photographs of Lincolnshire pubs and their artefacts.