Ye Olde Jug and Glass

This photograph has Charles in bowler by the front window, his daughter Edith (Ann) in her teens to the left of the front door, a younger cousin Edith from Chester is in the pinafore dress to the right. Behind them is cousin Edith’s mother and maid. Looking from the side door is Ann, and at the top of the yard a groom is preparing a carriage. 1887/8

The Jug and Glass was home to Christopher Thomson’s Penny Library in 1838. Christopher Thomson was a former travelling player turned painter and decorator and early socialist. He and a group of likeminded people set up the library for the benefit of working men. On discovering that few could read he started night classes in1838. The Edwinstowe Artisans Library and Mutual Instruction Society charged a penny -1d- entrance fee and ran three nights a week. Classes were free but members provided their own coal, candles and books. Instruction was offered in reading, writing, arithmetic, music, drawing and conversation. An annual ball was held to raise funds and after nine years they had five hundred volumes of books.

In 1844, Miles Webster installed gas lighting in his home on the High Street and in Ye Olde Jug and Glass next door.

The Jug and Glass by Margaret Woodhead

There has been a public house on this site since at least 1800.  It may have been a Beer House but by 1813, it was the Jug and Glass Inn with the proprietor John Jackson.  He was proprietor until it changed hands in 1822, to Samuel Webster.  In 1828 it was listed with Mary Hurst as proprietor.  In 1832 it was in the first Directory of Nottinghamshire, published by William White.  The proprietor was again Samuel Webster and Mary Hurst was in the Royal Oak.  He was still there at the 1841 Census.  By then the Oddfellows’ Friendly Society had started in the large back room and 43 members had joined the Benevolence Fund, paying 6d a week to be able to draw money in case of illness or, in death, to pay for a funeral.  One of the leading lights of the Oddfellows was Christopher Thomson, painter, decorator and early socialist who moved into the village.  In 1841 he encouraged a group of like-minded men to celebrate Sherwood Forest by holding a feast for all those who had written, painted or in anyway extolled the Forest.  On November 3, 1841, according to the Sheffield ‘Iris’ Newspaper,   ‘This interesting festival was celebrated in the Birkland & Bilhaugh Lodge room (Jug and Glass,) Edwinstowe, and will hereafter be recorded in annals of intellectual progress of the rural population of England, as one of the most remarkable demonstrations of the kind that ever occurred in that, or perhaps in any other neighbourhood.  The gathering of one hundred farmers, artisans, and labourers, from every part of Sherwood Forest, to that lovely rural village which has from time immemorial been considered its very heart;…..We repeat, the gathering of 100 farmers, artisans, woodsmen, and agricultural labourers, purely for literary and intellectual objects  qualifies us, as journalists, in attributing to the occasion a high degree of curiosity and importance’  During the two days’ festivities, for the less literary there were games on the forest: donkey races, climbing the greasy pole to reach a new beaver hat, bobbing for oranges, ‘cuts for the comical through a collar’ (pulling funny faces through a horse collar) and a sack race.  According to the Wright Directory of 1853, ‘In 1844 Mr Miles Webster enlivened the village by constructing Gas Works by which, besides his own premises and a large lamp in the street, he supplied the Jug and Glass his next door neighbour, and is about to enlarge his works’.  When the directory was compiled  Joseph Jackson was proprietor.  Elizabeth Bullivant was at the Black Swan, Thomas Walter at the Royal Oak, and James Davis at the Tally Ho, which is now the house opposite East Lane on Ollerton Road, James Davis was Master of the Hunting Dogs.  By 1864 William Yates was in the Jug and Glass and we are informed by the directory that Edwinstowe Fair, authorised by Henry 111, was held on October 24, St Edwin’s Day and the Parish Feast was on the following Sunday.  Mr Tudsbury had an extensive wood carving establishment and had a prize medal awarded at the Exhibition of 1862. In 1872, William Yeates was the proprietor of the Jug and Glass but by 1885 Mrs Jane Yeates was the proprietor and the Forest House was a Boarding House with Dining and Refreshment rooms run by Mr Charles Naish.  According to the Census of 1801 Charles Watkin was proprietor of the Jug and Glass, aged 51, with his wife Ann and his youngest daughter Edith Ann, aged 10.  She was to marry Herbert Woodhead and they helped Ann Watkin to run it until her death at 90 in 1933.

This photograph of the refurbished Jug and Glass circa 1920s, has Edith (Ann) Woodhead and her daughter Edith (Mary) Woodhead stood in the doorway. Charles widow Ann lived at the Jug and Glass.

Ye Olde Jug and Glass 1995

The Little John, Rufford Road c. 1890s 

REGISTER OF VICTUALLERS’ LICENCES granted in the Division (Edwinstowe) of Worksop in the County of Nottingham

Annual Value of Premises 3^rd Sept. 1873: £18

Name and Address of Owner:

3^rd Sept. 1873: Robert Wood Smith, Worksop

9^th Sept. 1874: Worksop and Retford Brewery Company Ltd.

List of Licensees, Tenants or Occupiers:

3^rd Sept. 1873   William Gates

9^th Sept. 1874    William Gates

7^th March 1877  Jano Geales

25^th Sept. 1889    Charles Watkin

21^st Oct. 1894    Ann Watkin

8^th Feb.1933       C.H.Holland

8^th Feb. 1936      Leonard Mitchell

27^th Sept. 1950   Walter Owen Clarke

11^th Feb. 1959     Richard Eric Wedd ?Wood

11^th May 1983     Ernest Hazlehurst

 

Record of Convictions

30^th September 1874.

Fined 5/- and costs for opening after 11 o’clock…..