Surrey - Pubs and Inns with a literary connection

William Cobbett was born on March 9th 1763 in Farnham, Surrey at his father’s small farm near the River Wey, in what is now Bridge Square - not far from the Farnham Maltings. The 17th century farmhouse later became a pub called The Jolly Farmer which was renamed the Willam Cobbett in the 1970s in honour of this greatest of Englishmen.
Cobbett was born into a comparatively humble family, and as a small boy began his working life scaring the birds in the fields. He had little formal education but eventually became Member of Parliament. Between these two occupations he was at various times, a professional soldier, farmer, publisher, author, journalist, pamphleteer, business man and one of the greatest of all political agitators.
Generally remembered for his Rural Rides and as the founder of Hansard, Cobbett, as a political journalist, was a thorn in the flesh of successive governments and for nearly forty years occupied a unique position of power using his brilliant pen to support the labouring poor by exposing corruption and dishonesty, earning himself the name 'The Poor Man's Friend'. No ordinary individual before or since has had such a dominating influence in public affairs on both sides of the Atlantic. He lies buried in the churchyard of St Andrew's in Farnham. His funeral was attended by an estimated 8,000 people.
One of the great assets of this real ale pub is the rich cross section of people it attracts. There are a lot of students at times, so it can get rather packed, but there is always somewhere to sit (or at least to stand). There is a bust of William Cobbett in the saloon bar and in the public there is a jukebox, fruit machines, pinball, plus a pool room upstairs with 3 tables and table football.
The small sloping beer garden behind the inn (where the tables tend to fall over) is described by Cobbett: "From my very infancy from the age of six years, when I climbed up the side of a steep sand rock, and there scooped me out a plot of four feet square to make me a garden and the soil for which I carried up in the bosom of my little blue smock frock, I have never lost one particle of my passion for these healthy and rational, and heart-warming pursuits."