Conversations In The Green Man.

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You stagger home from a long night out but still fancy one more. Luckily, at the end of your street is The Green Man Pub ( which has always been there, hasn’t it?). You go in, head to the backroom and sit down. The place is nice and the pints are decent so you overlook the strangeness of the clientele, their manners and their dress, and you fall into conversation with a tenant farmer from the 17th century who also found the pub on his way home.

This has happened up and down the centuries - people from different times have stumbled upon this strange pub, enjoyed a pint in each other’s company, and then wandered home with only the vaguest recollections of what they had actually talked about.

You’ve been here before, along with many others…

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Turing and Daniels

Alan Turing once spent a pleasant evening in The Green Man pub in conversation with C3 - PO actor Anthony Daniels, little realising that he was speaking to a famous robot.

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Lovelace and The Dilly Girls

The Dilly girls took Ada Lovelace to the cleaners over a long night of cards in The Green Man.

Counting their winnings on the way back to their bunks at Bletchley Park, the ladies agreed that poker night at the nearby pub was the best after hours activity that the top brass had come up with yet.

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Thornton and Stranger

Colonel Thomas Thornton, late of The West Riding Militia, usually recounted his tales, at volume, from the bar so that the whole room might best appreciate and enjoy his exploits. This evening, however, he homed in on the dreary - looking gentlemen sitting alone by the door.

As the drink took hold, Thornton bombarded this bespectacled bean counter with stories of his past: the time he meet Napoleon ( “presented him with a handsome pistol, engraved in gold and bearing the family crest, what.”) or that his first wife was actually a champion jockey, with numerous wins under her corset, don’tcha know!

Each story, no matter how well told, was met by nothing more than the occasional “Ah” or “Indeed” from the man. So Thornton brought out the big guns - not the story of his own unique 12 barrelled shotgun (which received only a polite nod) - but the story of the scythe!

He was, he claimed, the only man in Europe ( Nay! The World!) to have survived falling head first on to a scythe. It had caused his head to split right down the middle, until both sides were drooping down on either shoulder “like a pair of epaulettes”.

Met only by an “Oh dear!”, Thornton, defeated, finally asked the grey gentleman what he had been up to?

“Oh, this and that,” said the little man. Though he did admit to being tired after flying over to America to discuss ‘the Iraq problem’ and soon he had to fly to France to meet about Marseille. 

The Colonel slipped away, thinking him mad, leaving the man to ponder if he would have peas with his meal tonight.

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Pepys and Seymour

Samuel Pepys had been looking for cheese all day when he stumbled upon The Green Man.

Pepys had buried his wheel of parmesan cheese and best wine to save them as the fire made its way towards them. It was now a week later and, despite a day of digging, he had yet to recover either.

The distraught diarist took himself along to his local ( which seemed remarkably untouched) to drown his sorrows. He perked up immensely when he found an empty seat next to Jane Seymour. She, however, mistook his drunken references to melted cheese and wine as an invite to yet another fondue party. Jane politely excused herself and left. She had an early start on the ‘Live And Let Die’ set as it was.

[wodwoarms]

You stagger home from a long night out but still fancy one more. Luckily, at the end of your street is The Green Man Pub ( which has always been there, hasn’t it?). You go in, head to the backroom and sit down. The place is nice and the pints are decent so you overlook the strangeness of the clientele, their manners and their dress, and you fall into conversation with a tenant farmer from the 17th century who also found the pub on his way home.

This has happened up and down the centuries - people from different times have stumbled upon this strange pub, enjoyed a pint in each other’s company, and then wandered home with only the vaguest recollections of what they had actually talked about.

You’ve been here before, along with many others…

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Day - Lewis

A young Daniel Day - Lewis decided to stop in for one on his way home from rehearsals at The Bristol Old Vic.

The up and coming actor assumed the stangely dressed patrons were also actors from different plays - the pub being so close to the theatre district - and admired their commitment to their craft, never once breaking character.

"Now, this is acting!" Day - Lewis thought.

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Whittington and Georgiou

Richard Whittington met the strange minstrel Steven Georgiou when he leaned in to point out, after some personal shock, that the pretty boy sat across from them was, in fact, a lady! Wearing men’s clothes no less! 

Georgiou scoffed at the Alderman’s attitude. He asked why the older generation always insisted on telling the young how to live? To which Whittington proclaimed, “It’s the principle, boy!”

An awkward silence followed, so the middle - aged mercer ( who had really only wandered into The Green Man to check on overpricing and watered down beer, keeping his mayoral promises even after all these years...) apologised to the young man. To placate him further, he complimented the material of his clothing. He was, he said, in the trade himself and knew quality when he saw it. Steven recommended Henry Mathew and his family - run firm of tailors, and after that the two fell into pleasant conversation.

Another few pints was all it took to for Whittington to coax the singer to take up his lute and regale the inn with a song.

Afterwards, Dick was heard to tell his young friend that, while dogs were all well and good, he had found that cats got you further in life.

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Southill and The Shifting Inn

Ursula Southill, of Knaresborough, spoke often of seeing a ‘Shifting Inn’ on the edge of town. When she finally did enter, the sight of all the strange folk within drove her back out again. Out through the wrong door.

We do not know how long it took her to find her own door and her own time again. We do not know how many doors she had to try or what she saw beyond them. We do know that, by the time she did, she was, according to local carpenter Thomas Shipton: “much chang’d”.

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Lewis and Cromwell

C.S. Lewis once met Oliver Cromwell in The Green Man. Cromwell gave his name as Knaresborough to the young professor, and acted for all the world ( and for the benefit of the rest of the tavern ) as if he did not need the company or the ale.

But the year that he came in from was 1655, the Thames was frozen and there had been another Royalist uprising in March - if any man needed a warm hearth, it was him.

It was not the most pleasant of conversations, but something the warty, disagreeable gentleman said that night concerning ‘ winters that last forever and no Christmases’  stayed with Lewis.

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Blake and the Sun

William Blake said that he once conversed with the spiritual sun in The Green Man. He claimed that they were old friends, having spoken previously on Primrose Hill.

( No other patron can verify this meeting.)

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Fanque and Stranger

Pablo Fanque, the renowned equestrian and circus owner, took it upon himself to cheer up the lonely lady that sat in the corner of The Green Man.

A natural showman and gregarious to a fault, Pablo did his best to entertain the poor woman with his best and funniest tales from the centre ring - from a horse called Henry, whom they had taught to dance a waltz, to the singeing of an aging trampolinist during his act ( Pablo admitted that the hogshead of real fire may have been a mistake...)

However, it seemed as though nothing he could do could lift the spinster’s spirits. ( He thought that if her face fell any further, it would end up in her jar of ale.)

She was, she said, forgotten. Even her parish priest, Father Mckensie, often called her ‘Helena’ by mistake. She was certain that nobody would even turn up to her funeral. 

The ringmaster was about to argue with this but, just then, a group of rowdy youths, claiming to be quarry workers but carrying guitars, burst in and tried their luck at the bar.

They were turned away but in the commotion the lonely lady had slipped away, leaving Fanque to realise, only then, that he did not even know her name or where she had come from.

[wodwoarms]

You stagger home from a long night out but still fancy one more. Luckily, at the end of your street is The Green Man Pub ( which has always been there, hasn’t it?). You go in, head to the backroom and sit down. The place is nice and the pints are decent so you overlook the strangeness of the clientele, their manners and their dress, and you fall into conversation with a tenant farmer from the 17th century who also found the pub on his way home.

This has happened up and down the centuries - people from different times have stumbled upon this strange pub, enjoyed a pint in each other’s company, and then wandered home with only the vaguest recollections of what they had actually talked about.

You’ve been here before, along with many others…

[wodwoarms]

Farriner and Berry

After having one hell of a day, Thomas Farriner stumbled in The ( strangely untouched ) Green Man and found a seat next to Paul Hollywood and Mary Berry. They were out celebrating the success of their first series and could not understand why the soot - covered man began to cry when they discussed their favourite recipes.

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Seacole and Stranger

Mary Seacole - Mary Grant at the time - had her first drink in The Green Man in 1821, while visiting her family in London. The Henriques were very welcoming but Sarah was overcome with a powerful need to escape their rictus - grinning good nature.

She was much surprised that the public house at the end of the road ( had she seen it riding in?) was open to women, and even more surprised that it did not disparage those of a creole persuasion.

The young man that she fell into conversation with that night claimed to be a poet, newly arrived in the capital. Sarah found nothing in his low, vulgar talk to warrant this assertion, but much in his movement and obvious discomfort to suggest that he had been welcomed to the city by a certain type of lady.

Before leaving, Mary Seacole told him of a poultice that might ease his pains. The playwright was effusive in his thanks, promising that, if it worked, he would never forget his ‘Dark Lady’.

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Conan Doyle and Dadd

Arthur Conan Doyle discovered The Green Man in 1920 on his way back from consulting Sir Oliver Lodge, the eminent physicist, over some photographs he had received from Yorkshire. While Lodge had advised caution, Doyle found that he still needed a friendlier audience to hear out his theories ( and the patrons of The Green Man were always willing to listen to a good story...weren’t they?)

So it was that Richard Dadd, late of The Royal Academy of Arts and still undecided as to whether to take a draughtsman job that would see him travelling to the East, found himself sitting across from the blustery Scot as he pontificated on all things fairy.

We do not know if this late night conversation had any effect on either man, but we do know that, as he made his way home, Doyle’s thoughts turned to excitable artists - to his own father - and how art in the blood truly is likely to take the strangest forms.

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Coleridge and Barrett

Roger ‘Syd’ Barrett happened upon ‘The Green Man’ at the end of a frustrating, frazzled week recording ‘The Piper at the Gates of Dawn’. The frustrated, frazzled Barrett took the pagan deity swinging above the door of a pub so close to the recording studio as a, for want of a better word, sign.( If anybody else had been around, they might have heard him mumble ‘Pan’ as he pushed open the door.)

Samuel Taylor Coleridge - residing at this point in Somerset - realised that being left to abstruser musings by the the inmates of his cottage might not always suit him best and so took himself along the lane to his local. (It was his local, wasn’t it? The people there greeted him as if it was.)

It is little wonder that these two found each other at the bar.

Their resulting conversation - legendary even by The Green Man’s standards - carried on late into the night and was as diverse as it was disjointed, covering everything from transcendentalism to Coleridge’s attempts at a vegetable garden*.

They at last, as all artists do in the early hours of the morning, agreed to collaborate. Ideas were thrown about: imagery involving ice and floating and underground waters - but they could not agree on specifics. Barrett argued the setting should be astronomic/ planetary in nature; Coleridge was adamant it should be mystic but historic.

They came away that night only agreeing to meet again the following week. Sadly, this did not come to pass but Coleridge vowed to complete the work with no further interruptions.

* Barrett, who had missed his new friend's name, came to think of him as the 'Vegetable Man'.