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This
West Sussex pub just off the Petersfield-Chichester road at
Hooksway is now a smart watering hole but I remember it in the
1960s when it was a run-down ale house owned by Alfie Angier.
The pub is the only remaining building of a small village which
existed on this site but was wiped out by plague - as were several
other small villages in this area, I was told, and this corner
of West Sussex remains relatively under-populated to this day.
Everybody
knew about the Royal Oak but nobody quite knew how to get there
- but eventually I struck lucky and managed to visit the place.
This was the late 1960s and the pub served no wines or spirits,
only beer some of which was brewed on the premises. There was
no counter, only a serving hatch in the single bar and no electricity
either - lighting was by oil lamps (Heaven help you if you needed
to go outside to the Gents on a dark night). The huge wooden
table and seating looked as if it had been there since the time
of the Tudors, but there was one chair nobody dare sit down
on. This was the seat of the landlord, Alfie Angier, who would
sit there most evenings regaling his customers with the oft
told story of the day in the early 1930s when the Prince of
Wales (later King Edward VIII) called in there on the way to
or from the racing at Goodwood. I
hope somebody photographed the place for posterity prior to
its 'renovation' and the arrival of mains water and electricty.
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Life
at the Royal Oak in the 1890's
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Martha
Woods In retirement. She died in 1925 aged 85. No photograph
exists of William Woods.
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Life
at the Royal Oak, Hooksway, a century ago, when my maternal
grandparents were in charge, was hugely different from what
it is today.
It was an old-style ale house, a villagers' meeting place, little
changed since it was built in the 1400s. There were oil lamps
to be lit, brick and stone-flagged floors to be swept, deal
tables to be scrubbed, water to be drawn from a well and a primitive
wash-house for laundering.
But judging from my mother's memories it had its lighter moments,
and from her parents she learned the resourcefulness and skills
which would help her survive her own hard times.
Like many working class families of their day, William Woods
and his wife Martha knew tragedy and misfortune and it was one
such setback which led them to the Royal Oak.
The couple were married at Stoughton in 1866 and settled in
Forestside. By 1875 they already had five children. Then William
succeeded his father as gamekeeper on the Stansted Estate, then
owned by the Wilder family but now the seat of the Earls of
Bessborough.
The appointment meant a move to Woodberry Lane at Racton on
the road from Rowlands Castle to Westbourne. There Martha gave
birth to six more children including, in 1880, my mother Emma.
She was followed three years later by triplets - two girls and
a boy. This brought the first family misfortune for within 16
months the boy and one girl had died; they are now buried together
in Forestside churchyard.
William and Martha's last child, Ethel Louise, was born in 1885.
Three years later misfortune struck again when William was attacked
by poachers he surprised one night. His injuries ended his career
as a gamekeeper and led to the move to the Royal Oak in November
1889. Officially William was the licensee but it was the indomitable
Martha who, besides bringing up her large brood, ruled over
the business.
For his part William was consigned to looking after the seven
acres of pasture and woodlands which went with the inn along
with an assortment of stables, pig pens, fowl houses, barns
and outhouses. Here he kept a range of animals, grew the produce
which kept the family self-nourished and made hurdles, chestnut
fencing and the like.
Martha meanwhile pursued an "open-all-hours" policy,
ignoring the prevailing licensing laws with impunity by the
simple expedient of regaling the local bobby with a constant
supply of free beer, eggs, wild rabbits and other produce.
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