Our thanks to the Stoke History Group for this third article from their April newsletter, Jabet’s Ash. John Marshall writes…..
The current Rose and Crown pub on Walsgrave Road, situated on the corner of Church Lane, has been in existence since 1926 but its predecessor goes back to 1868 when it was a very different building known simply as The Beerhouse.
In the nineteenth century this part of Walsgrave Road was usually referred to as Church End, to signify the end of the road to St Michael’s Church, but these days the area is more commonly known as The Forum, a reference to the art deco cinema that once existed nearby. Apart from the church itself, Church End was once dominated by several top shop weavers’ houses, a few workers’ cottages, and an old-fashioned ale house.
The Beerhouse was probably a domestic dwelling or farm house that began to sell beer and it seems to have existed from 1868 to 1876, when it changed its name to the Rose and Crown. It occupied a site, not on the current plot but on the other side of Church Lane, where a row of shops now stands.
The first known landlord was Richard Kimberley but by 1919 the pub was in the hands of Walter Cramp, who, according to Fred Luckett, a Coventry pub historian, ran the house with a rod of iron and refused to admit women. In those days, says Luckett, it was a village local, nicknamed ‘Crampy’s’.
The application to build a new pub on the site was first made in 1919 but there was some hesitation on the part of the Justices because of the proximity of other pubs like The Old Ball, the Bull’s Head, the New Inn and the Red Horse. But permission was eventually granted and in 1926 a new pub opened nearby, on the other corner of Church Lane. The stern Walter Cramp, who had formerly been in charge of the old pub, continued as the landlord of the new building until 1940.
With thanks to Fred Luckett’s book ‘Coventry Pubs’ (2018) and the excellent pub history site of historiccoventry.co.uk