Public Houses
Before the Workmen's Club was opened in 1886 there had been earlier public houses in the village. The Three Daggers seems to have been the longest established and was part of the old village, moving location with it in the early years of the 19th century. Another was the Crown Inn, built apparently in the 18th century but known to be operating as an inn only in the middle years of the 19th century. In nearby North Street was the New Inn, operating for a short while after the Three Daggers and the Crown had ceased business, and the Thatcher's Arms which operated from at least the middle of the 19th century and continued to do so into the 21st century before becoming a private house.
The Three Daggers
The Three Daggers was the principal inn in Englefield for many years and was evidently a significant building for it was the regular venue for auction sales and inquests. The name is probably a reference to the arms of the Paulet family (three swords in pile) as is the case with an inn in Wiltshire dating from 1750. There is a record of the Three Daggers in Englefield being kept by William and Elizabeth Miland in 1725 and apparently by Mr Gibson in 1774. The inn is regularly mentioned in the local newspapers as the venue for auction sales and inquests throughout the remainder of that century and most of the next.
The inn must have originally been in the centre of the old village (somewhere around the figure 1 in the image above) for the line taken by the Tidmarsh Turnpike when it was built in 1771 is described as running from the Bath Road at Bostock Lane “through Englefield Common Field to or near a house in Englefield Street known by sign of The Daggers and thence along Englefield Street into the Highway leading out of Englefield Street through Tidmarsh by and through a place called Hog Moore”. This would appear to put it somewhere around where this new road joined the road from Theale, near the Rectory and Appleton’s Corner.
When the old village was pulled down by Benyon de Beauvoir and rebuilt in its present location, the Daggers moved with it and certainly from around 1820 or slightly earlier was the last house (pictured left, now number 27) at the bottom of the new Englefield Street, by the junction with the Pangbourne Road (figure 3 in the image). It was at that time kept by Edward May and after he died by his widow Kitty but she too died, of a stroke in the garden of the Daggers in December 1850 and John Woods became the inn-keeper.
The Three Daggers seems to have closed and become two houses shortly after 1861 when the New Inn was built in North Street and John Woods moved there. The original building was just the centre section of the present one; the wings across each end being built by German or Italian prisoners during the Second World War.
The Crown
The Crown was what is now number one in The Street (figure 2 in the image), assessed to date from some time in the 18th century. Whether it was built as an inn is unclear and information is sparse but in the 1841 census it is inhabited by James Mildenhall aged 32, the Parish Clerk, and his wife Harriet and in the same year W Fletcher and E J Nieman in A Tour Round Reading mention the Crown Inn in Englefield.
James Mildenhall obviously died soon after for in the register of rents and tithes of 1844 the house, which is owned by Caroline Hopkins, is lived in by "the widow Mildenhall". In 1851 Harriet Mildenhall's occupation is given as "beer seller" though the only official description of the property as the Crown Inn is in the census of 1861 when the publican was William Ham. In the next census the house is listed as "Private" and occupied by Benjamin Webb, a retired grocer (previously in business at the shop in the village). In 1881 the house is listed as "Crown Cottage".
The New Inn
The New Inn was built at North Street on the site of the "Timbered Cottage" after that was pulled down in 1860 (figure 4 on the image). The publican was John Woods who moved from the Three Daggers, which then became a private house. The New Inn was the venue for the annual payment of rents by the estate tenants, after which they would be entertained to dinner by Mr Benyon.
John Woods was still a Beer Seller in North Street in 1881 but after that the New Inn seems to have ceased operating and while buildings were still shown on the site in 1883, by the start of the First World War it had been levelled.
The Thatcher's Arms
The Thatcher's Arms (figure 5 on the image) was the last of the local pubs to go when it was converted into a private dwelling in 2009.
The Thatcher's Arms is first mentioned as such in the census of 1851 when the occupier is Thomas Woodeson and his occupation is given as "Thatcher, Grocer and Beer House Keeper". His son John was also a thatcher so the name "Thatcher's Arms" is more than just a casual choice (though it should really be Thatchers' Arms). Thomas Woodeson was also living in North Street in 1841, though neither the name of the house nor his occupation is stated. In 1871 and 1881 Thomas's son Amos is listed as a Beer Seller at the Thatcher's Arms but in 1891 he has moved next door and is occupied as a thatcher. The Thatcher's Arms is now in the hands of Samuel Fisher, a Blacksmith, Grocer and Beer Seller and he remains there when the census records run out in 1911, although he was then a woodman as well as publican.
Like the Three Daggers, the Thatcher's Arms was used as the venue for inquests, including that in 1858 of Lydia Woodeson, an "idiot woman" aged 26 and the daughter of Thomas Woodeson, who was burnt to death in the house when her clothes caught fire as she was reaching up for some pins on the mantelpiece.
In 1899 Samuel Fisher was fined £1 for selling alcohol during prohibited hours on a Sunday. He appealed against the conviction and the case apparently turned on the definition of "bona-fide travellers" (to whom the serving of alcohol was allowed). It concerned a number of groups of people in traps who, it transpired, were simply on an organised "pub crawl" rather than being bona-fide travellers and Fisher's appeal was successful on the grounds that he made the necessary enquiries to ascertain that the groups were bona-fide travellers, even though they turned out not to be.
In 1893 William Knight, a carpenter employed by Mr Benyon was fined one shilling with eleven shillings and sixpence costs for assaulting Samuel Fisher during a dispute over a one penny deposit on a bottle of beer to take out. In 1876 James Knight, a labourer from Theale, was fined £1 with 11s 6d costs for being drunk and disorderly in the Thatcher's Arms after he became abusive and struck Amos Wooderson's daughter when Amos refused to serve him on the grounds that he had had sufficient.
When the Workmen's Club in Englefield was opened the Thatcher's Arms was one of the sources of "bad company and excess of drink" that the Rector said the Club was intended to save the men of Englefield from - apparently with some justification.
There are some interesting memories of the Thatcher's on the Closed Pubs website.