Frome Times Past

The Blue Boar in the Market Place has the distinction of being one of the oldest of Frome’s 14 or so surviving pubs and was built by a Theophilus Lacey, who took on a lease for 99 years from November 3rd 1691. 

In the 1720s, a lock-up was built abutting the pub and years later, Frome town constable Isaac Gregory was there to keep an eye on things. In March 1818 he was in no mood for petty squabbles, “Sent for in haste to the Blue Boar 2 men was fighting in the parlour one of the men lost his hat and had his cloths much torn, it served him right as he had no business there and he had no pity from me”. 

There was more violence afoot in 1823 when a man was killed just outside after a quarrel over some beer. John Crees died after the fight which resulted in convictions for manslaughter. A little later the pub was used as an annex to the lock-up when George Howarth, part of a notorious criminal gang, was caught stealing wood from a timber yard nearby. After a ferocious fight he was wounded, arrested, and taken to the pub to have his wounds dressed. During the night Howarth escaped by leaping out of a window 20 feet high into the water and gaining the opposite bank. He was free for several weeks before being recaptured and transported for life.

Despite the obvious folly of using a pub bedroom for a prison, in August of 1844, a Mr. Batt tried to sell a stolen horse. He was imprisoned in the very same room from which George Howarth had escaped nearly 20 years before. On Sunday night the padlock was secured and ‘all was right’ but come Monday morning, “an open casement and yards of bed cord hanging outside the window, told the fact of how the constables were regularly done.”

In January of 1857, when  Superintendent Summers heard a great noise coming from the pub after hours, he organised a raid and claimed to have found 40 or 50 people inside, many of them drunk and some who couldn’t stand up – not a sober man there. Also on the scene was the Parish Constable, Mr. Newport, who was asked make a note of those present, “I went home to get my pencil to take down the names of the people in the room. There was no noise or improper conduct that I saw nor was there anyone drunk.“ Newport’s evidence directly contradicted that of the police as did the evidence of those present – not surprisingly. 

To make things worse, some of the defence witnesses claimed that there had been a band playing and others that there had been no band at all. Despite all concerned making a complete dog’s dinner of the case, the bench assumed that something had been going on and, “The evidence for the defence being contradictory, defendant was fined 40/- and 6/10d costs “

In 1861 the Boar was the scene of what was one of the towns most incompetent attempts at theft. James Ruddock having “possessed himself of the pub curtain unperceived” nips over the road to the Black Swan and tries to sell it. Having no luck he takes it back to the Blue Boar and – gets arrested! 

Silas Goddard a tailor ‘whose garments were out of repair and who was the possessor of a wooden leg’ was in trouble in 1868 when he was found to be swearing and wanting to fight someone, eventually pushing Mr. Harvey, the landlord, down. PC Watts went to assist ‘when he received a poke in the side from the prisoner’s wooden leg. Prisoner flourished his timber member violently and boasted of its various uses and the advantages derived from it compared with its predecessor. Some broken heads would have been the result had not PC Watts unscrewed the leg and took it away’. Fined £20 or 2 months hard labour.

Things have calmed done a little since those days and now the ‘Bluey’ is a traditional family run pub offering accommodation, home cooked food and real cider under the watchful eye of landlady Sue Hartland.

These and other tales of criminality and drunken revelry can be enjoyed in our books ‘Foul Deeds and Suspicious Deaths in Frome’ & ‘The Historic Inns of Frome’

Mick Davis & 

David Lassman