Demolition of Ye Olde Harrow
the sign  ||   bowling club  ||   the new owners
Famous sign that hung outside The harrow

An Inn with a colourful history23 July 2008

The Harrow is mentioned from at least as early as 1745. In those times there were footpads on the commons and highwaymen on the notoriously dangerous turnpike - Portsmouth Road. Viz. The General Advertiser of 20 September 1748:

"Last week several robberies were committed on the Portsmouth Road, by two highwaymen well mounted, who made a considerable booty. – The great number of robbberies we continually hear of on the several roads, and in this City and Suburbs, and the probability of their encreasing in the winter season, requries the strictest regard of al people to prevent them. – Many schemes have been propos’d, but none seems more likely to answer the purpose, than that all people who lett lodgings should be obliged to give an account of all in-mates, their business, etc. "

Some highwaymen were caught and hanged - for example Tom Waters (executed 1691), Evan Evans (executed 1708), William Hawke (hanged 1774) and Jerry Abershawe (hanged 1795). But the general failure of authority to combat such crimes led to widespread protest and eventually to police reform in the late 1700s. It was the period of Henry Fielding, who set up the Bow Street Runners, publishing his "Inquiry into the Causes of the Late Increase of Robbers" in 1751 in which he singled out as primary causes:

- too many people coming to London expecting an easy life - corruption in the government - people were choosing crime rather than hard work - ineffective constables

Hitherto law enforcement had hardly changed since medieval times. JPs or Justices of the Peace were appointed by the Crown (since 1361). They were assisted by Constables who worked part-time for low-pay and were unreliable. There were also Watchmen, called Charleys after King Charles II who introduced them. A Lord Mayor of London, Matthew Wood deplored that they spent very little time patrolling, instead playing cards, going to pubs with prostitutes or sleeping, and alleged that some of them took bribes from criminals.

There was great pressure for reform. In London, the River Thames Police were established in 1798 and in 1805 54 armed men were employed to patrol the highways - the Horse Patrol, known as 'Robin Redbreasts' because of their apparel. Locally, towards the end of the 18th century, an amateur police force of about 80 men was formed at Weston Green. In 1792, there was a protest march to The Harrow Inn that led to a group of vigilantes being formed and based there. Their backers included William Speer of Weston Grange, Thomas Bracey and William Chauncey. The days of highwaymen were numbered.

Further reading on highwaymen:

Many snippets of history
More on highwaymen

The famous sign

There were increases in beer duties in 1692. An extra three shillings per barrel was levied on Strong beer, driving up the price from tuppence to tuppence ha’penny per quart. The name 'twopenny' is sometimes attributed to strong beer because of the pricing. But to brewers the tax rise stimulated ways to get more beers out of a malting. A second infusion of warm water to the grains that were left in the tun after the initial runnings, collected as a second runoff for a lower gravity beer, became a "twopenny ale" (essentially a Bitter or Mild Ale). A 'small beer.'

By the 18th century the average Londoner drank nearly ninety gallons of beer a year.

Cider became more fashionable in the middle of the 18th century, but was never consumed in enough abundance to make a name for itself.

Ye Olde Harrow is also known for an historic sign carrying the date 1773 (but the sign may well have dated from later than that) that hung outside the Inn until at least the mid-1980s. It has been replaced by a more modern blackboard-type sign carrying the same words:

"Come my dear Brother
Let's comfort each other
Here's Rum & good Ginn
And Brandy Within
Cyder and twopenny fit for a King"

The poet Eric Wilson Barker (1905 - 1973) spent his childhood in Thames Ditton, attending the old church school in Church Walk before his family emigrated to California for health reasons. Barker became a celebrated poet and was offered the laureateship of California, which he declined. He revisited his Thames Ditton birthplace in 1959 and wrote to a friend: "I visited an ancient pub, The Old Harrow near Weston Green. I always remember the lines on the signboard of that inn when I was a kid.... There it was too and the old weatherworn sign with the letters a bit dim but still legible!" Barker wrote the following poem in 'Looking for Water', published by Crighton House Inc. New York, 1964:

"IN THAMES DITTON

In Thames Ditton I remembered a clock
Drawn on the bottom of my father's straw hat,
The hands pointing to three o'clock.
This is how you tell the time, he said.
But in those quick years I cared no more for time
Than a gadding May fly or a climbing lark
Unless it told me when to seek a field
Whose single beech tree by its inching shade
Showed me how time was measured by the sun.

In Thames Ditton I remembered a sign
Rhymed and creaking in the wind
Inviting thirst inside The Harrow.
Time had circled forty years
The clocks of fading dandelions
When I went back and found it there.
There it hung and nothing changed.
And I stood there, remembering words
Blown across a summer field
Of dandelions died out of glory.

A wider whispering evening now
Filled the branches of the beech.
A thicker shadow on the grass
Travelled towards the end of day.
I leaned with love against the tree
And looked across the golden field,
The prime before the dandelions
begin to show their greying clocks
For wind to blow the time away."

(reprinted from Thames Ditton Today December 1982)

The Bowling Club

The Harrow was managed by many a landlord. Some fared less well and left - one family emigrating to Canada in 1909. By 1927 Hampton Court Way had still not been laid down and Briginshaw's Farm stretched away behind Ye Olde Harrow where Esher College is today. The Harrow's landlord at that time, William Crosby, offered a small meadow, at a rent of £6 per annum, to ten local gentlemen who were to become the Founders of The Dittons Bowling Club. The rent was promptly waived when Crosby was made an honorary member! The Bowling Green was laid with Cumberland turf and was one of the oldest bowling greens in Surrey. In 1941 The Harrow was taken over by Ernie and Dorrie Cartwright (who were already landlords of The Swan in Thames Ditton). Ernie became a member of the Club and a very keen bowler, while Dorrie provided the match teas under the trees fringing the green that became an enduring tradition.

The clubhouse suffered damage from an incendiary bomb in 1944, but a club member, George Leverett, was in the Auxiliary Fire Service and the flames were promptly extinguished.

Dr. G. Collier took over The Harrow in 1950, showing great interest in the Club and making the billiard room available for meetings. He was made an Honorary Life Vice President. In 1953 the Club voted to 'make the green available for ladies' but it was not until 1985 that ladies were permitted to be full members.

And now?

Ye Olde Harrow was accumulated as one of around 845 freehold pubs by an investment company now known as the Wellington Pub Company that in the mid 1990s was owned by the Japanese investment bank Nomura that became the UK's leading pub owner. The WELLINGTON PUB COMPANY PLC now registered at 25 Harley Street London W1G 9BR was previously known as WELLINGTON FINANCE PLC (23/02/1998), GROVEBASE PROPERTIES LIMITED (16/01/1998 ) and TRUSHELFCO (NO.2281) LIMITED (29/10/1997). In 1996 the pub portfolio was acquired by Hugh Osmond, a director and founder of the Pizza Express chain, and Roger Myers. It is not clear from the research we have done (without the benefit of Dunn and Bradstreet and with no money to pay for other business data services) at what point Wellington Pub Company became tied in with / synonymous with Wellington Investments Limited, but they are both apparently in the same stable. WELLINGTON INVESTMENTS LIMITED, also of 25 Harley Street London W1G 9BR was previously called SOLAPLAN PLC (29/10/1997). In August 2004, the Reuben Brothers David and Simon Reuben, described on their website as well known figures in the UK property market, acquired the Wellington Pub Company from Sun Capital and Hugh Osmond. Wellington Investments changed hands at the same time. Wellington Pub Company had then approximately 840 tenanted pubs, mainly in the South-East of England , being the largest Free of Tie pub estate in the country.

Between 13 September and 8 October 2004 the Company Secretary and nine Directors resigned from Wellington Pub Company, and eight Directors along with the Company Secretary resigned from Wellington Investments. The Auditors for both companies resigned on 10 March 2005.

Around the end of 2005 the owners refused to renew the lease on the bowling green for The Dittons Bowling Club, which was made an offer they could not refuse and forced to disband against a small payoff for members. The owners submitted a planning application to demolish Ye Olde Harrow and build a block of 14 flats with parking on its site. After a vigorous campaign by local customers of The Harrow, with support from the Resdients' Association which had grave concernes about the overscale plans bordering on green belt, permission was denied.

The property has been sold on to Newville Homes Ltd., Optimal House 49 Station Road Gerrards Cross Buckinghamshire who made a new application on 30 May 2008, declared valid from 11 July and notified to earlier objectors in a letter dated 16 July.that was delivered 23 July. The application is for six detached houses with integral garages and plans have not (yet) been put online. They may be viewed at the Civic Centre in Esher.

See the Elmbridge Borough Council web site - application reference number is 2008/1742,Planning Services.