By Steve the Beermeister
It gets more interesting the more I look into this, but which pub is the oldest in Hastings, following the closure of the King's Head, the previously well-acknowledged oldest pub?
In my blog of 7th December, I mentioned that Alan from the Stag Inn, All Saints Street, had had a 'hissy fit' after he partially read (I presume, either that, or he has difficulty understanding the English language) my article in the Hastings Independent of 21st November, writing in to the following issue complaining about my article, which had started with the Anchor as the 'baseline' in my quest to find the oldest pub in Hastings.
Jim Breeds commented on that blog "I shall share these posts to my Hastings and Area Facebook page this afternoon. We may get some opinions on there :) - for which I was grateful, but this received the usual assertions with no evidence to back them up, some people think it's one, some t'other. Cheers anyway, Jim!
As I said before, Alan used the Shepherd Neame
website to support his argument, which says "The Stag is the oldest pub still open in Hastings... with whitewashed walls and oak beams, the pub dates from 1547... The front is in Georgian style, added by the Victorians... There are two bars. The front is the most commonly used and features the famous "mummified" cats... they were found in a chimney on the first floor during the 1940s... There is no historical evidence, but it is popularly believed they belonged to Hannah Clarke, a witch, who is said to have occupied the Stag in the earlier part of its existence."
However, I have recently had a reply to my enquiry from Shepherd Neame who told me "Our records for the Stag only go back to 1859 when it was already a pub, and similarly our records for the Anchor go back to 1804 when it was already a pub." So, the brewery has no evidence to support their assertion that the pub dates from 1547 as a pub, though, as I've said before, I have no doubt that the building was originally older than the Anchor.
Indeed, following his own extensive research, David Russell's 'Register of Licensees for Hastings & St Leonards 1500-2010' states that license records for the Stag go back to 1835, when Samuel Heathfield held the license. For the Anchor they go back to 1798, when Anne Thwaites held the license. Furthermore, there is no evidence that the Stag had a license before that time, and it wasn't until 1838 that Samuel applied for a 'full license'.
The introduction of the idea that a witch lived there is interesting, and may well offer support for the assertion that the Stag has been a pub for a lot longer. The practice of walling up a cat, with the animal sometimes still alive, is known to have been a medieval precaution against evil spirits.
Dr Marion Gibson, Professor of Literature at Exeter University, whose research investigates the relationships between writings about magic and the supernatural and those about identity, spanning the period c.1500-present, says that cats "were often put into walls as some kind of good luck charm. It seems to have been quite a widespread practice across the European continent."
During the medieval era hundreds of women were accused of witchcraft and executed, and many of those women were brewers or 'brewsters'. The visual features associated with witches date from the time, the cat, a bubbling cauldron, the broom and pointed hat, yet they are all symbols associated with brewing beer too.
A cat could keep vermin at bay that may eat malted barley, the bubbling cauldron or 'kettle' is the vessel in which the ingredients are boiled. When the brew cools down, yeast lands on it and ferments the sugars, creating a dramatic froth.
The broom could be used to sweep up, but anyone selling beer was required to display an 'ale stake' above their door as a sign that beer was on sale. An ale stake was a wooden pole with a bunch of twigs tied to the end. Indeed, hanging foliage above a door as a sign to proclaim the sale of alcohol dates back to Roman times.
Finally, a pointed hat was a practical way of being noticed. Women with surplus beer would go to the marketplace to sell it, or a middle woman known as a 'huckster' would act as an agent to sell the beer. They wore the pointed hats to make themselves prominent in a market crowd.
Anyway, my point today is, I still cannot assert, with certainty, which pub of these 2 is the oldest building continuously used as a pub! But perhaps I shan't need to, and maybe we'll never really know, though I still have a few other hostelries to consider. More soon... ish, cheers!
