One day, during their early married life, G. K. Chesterton and his wife Frances set out from Kensington on what he called "a sort of second honeymoon". With no definite goal in
mind but in a spirit of mild adventuring they took a bus and then a train and ended up wandering through the Buckinghamshire countryside. In his Autobiography he tells how they passed through a large
and quiet cross-roads of a sort of village called Beaconsfield.. They had bed and breakfast "at an inn called The White Hart", learned that a local pronunciation of the place-name was Beconsfield,
and then and there decided it was where "someday we will make our home" Seven years later they bought a house called Overroads between the old and new towns and this is where he wrote the Father
Brown detective stories.
In addition to his prolific journalism, Chesterton wrote around 80 books, several hundred poems, some 200 short stories, 4000 essays, and several plays. His poems tend to celebrate the Englishness of
England, the nation of beef and beer. Trying to escape tedious situations in his A Ballade of An Anti- puritan he ends every
verse with the plea "Will someone take me to a pub?" Naturally he was by no means slow in establishing his own niche in the White Hart and a bust of him stood for many years in his favourite bar.
Dating back to 1570, the White Hart is a traditional English market town inn. It stands in the centre of Beaconsfield and the photograph shows it as Chesterton would have known it. However, today,
Chesterton's "quiet cross-roads" is the busy junction where Park lane meets the London Road. The inn has also changed. It is now a large open-plan dining pub - bright and clean but with little trace
of the character it must once have had when it made such an impression on the youthful couple. The hotel's sign stands across the road from the building. In 1624 the licensee, Nat Aldridge, was fined
two pence for putting it up on 'The Lord's waste' (i.e. land owned by the Lord of the Manor). The sign is still placed away from the building.
This popular pub, restaurant and hotel, is a 'Vintage Inn' serving a selection of real ales and good wines to acompany the Classic Beef & Ale Pie, Sausages with Cheddar Mash, Fish & Chips and
hearty Sunday roasts.
Beaconsfield
In his 1875 essay An Autumn Effect ... Robert Louis Stevenson recounts staying the night here at
the Red Lion: "a pleasant old house, with bay-windows, and three peaked gables, and many swallows' nests plastered about the eaves". Of the interior he says: "I never saw any room much more to be
admired than the low wainscoted parlour in which I spent the remainder of the evening how pleasant it looked, all flushed and flickered over by the light of a brisk companionable fire".
He writes beautifully about his interaction with the landlord's young daughter who showed him her special doll. After spending the evening reading he finally retired to bed and reports hearing a party of children singing together sweetly in the street: "One can rarely be in a pleasant place without meeting with some pleasant accident. I have a conviction that these children would not have gone singing before the inn unless the inn-parlour had been the delightful place it was".
A decade after Stevenson's visit Rupert Brooke became a regular visitor. When I called in 2006, this early coaching inn with its 17th century timbers, low ceilings and giant brick hearths was easily recogniseable from Stevenson's detailed description. I made enquiries about the history of the old place and was told I needed to speak to Dolly but she wasn't working that day. It transpired that Dolly was 91 years of age and had worked at the Red Lion for the last 61 of those. At that time there was a large photograph of Dolly together with her mother, brother and friend hanging on the wall near the foot of the oak staircase which leads up from the bar.
This attractive half-timbered red brick pub has been lately restored and the framing to a large extent renewed. A tablet inserted in the south end gable bears the date 1669 and the initials W.R.F. The building has been closed for six months up to the 17th March (2008) for major internal refurbishment. The local newspaper reports: "We've missed the Red Lion and are glad to have a Wendover flagship back in good order". Marston brewery have spent a small fortune and by most accounts the refurbishment has been sympathetic - good food, great beer and friendly service are once again the order of the day.
He writes beautifully about his interaction with the landlord's young daughter who showed him her special doll. After spending the evening reading he finally retired to bed and reports hearing a party of children singing together sweetly in the street: "One can rarely be in a pleasant place without meeting with some pleasant accident. I have a conviction that these children would not have gone singing before the inn unless the inn-parlour had been the delightful place it was".
A decade after Stevenson's visit Rupert Brooke became a regular visitor. When I called in 2006, this early coaching inn with its 17th century timbers, low ceilings and giant brick hearths was easily recogniseable from Stevenson's detailed description. I made enquiries about the history of the old place and was told I needed to speak to Dolly but she wasn't working that day. It transpired that Dolly was 91 years of age and had worked at the Red Lion for the last 61 of those. At that time there was a large photograph of Dolly together with her mother, brother and friend hanging on the wall near the foot of the oak staircase which leads up from the bar.
This attractive half-timbered red brick pub has been lately restored and the framing to a large extent renewed. A tablet inserted in the south end gable bears the date 1669 and the initials W.R.F. The building has been closed for six months up to the 17th March (2008) for major internal refurbishment. The local newspaper reports: "We've missed the Red Lion and are glad to have a Wendover flagship back in good order". Marston brewery have spent a small fortune and by most accounts the refurbishment has been sympathetic - good food, great beer and friendly service are once again the order of the day.
Copyright T.W. Townsend - the opinions expressed herein are those of the author and any observations were correct at the time of the
review.