pause awhile with three jolly wheelers

A late afternoon visit to the Three Jolly Wheelers in Woodford Bridge, Essex.

It was a pub which I hadn't visited for a very long time. Someone asked me if I remembered the inside and I had to confess that I'd treated it as if it was a new location, because of the changes to the layout.

The original pub dates from around the 1830s. What I remembered was a substantially different layout which had separate public and saloon bars. The beers used to be sold at different prices depending on the level of bar decor. There had even been a small off licence tacked on to the side.

Of course, all of that has been obliterated in various modernisations, through the times when pubs had become more open plan and egalitarian. On our particular evening it was very quiet, but bracing itself for the next and densely packed New Year's Eve.

Just along the road, another Grade II listed hostelry from the 1500s hasn't survived as a pub. It used to be called Ye Olde Kings Head (yes, really), and had been a Charles Dickens inspiration for The Maypole in Barnaby Rudge.

Then Lord Alan Sugar bought it a few years ago and it is now operating as a somewhat black and gold Tudor Turkish restaurant. I guess it's handy for Lord Sugar, who lives just around the corner in Chigwell, within walking distance of the establishment.

I normally focus on 'fun going forward', but what with year end and all, it is also interesting to briefly look at 'fun going back'.