The Nag's Head
By Cyril Pagram
Players cigarettes were about 5p.
I was the last publican of The Nag’s Head in the High Street when I took over the licence from Arthur Goates in the late 1950s. Like most publicans before me, I had a another daytime job and had to leave my wife to manage the bar during the day. Beer prices during the early 1960s stayed fairly stable at 1/9d ( about 8p) a pint for bitter and 1/3d for mild beer. Brown ale was about 10d ( 4p) a bottle and twenty Players cigarettes were about 5p. (But in those days £1,000 was a good annual wage. Ed).
Only two pubs were left by then out of six which had continued after the war, and the local footballers and their supporters used to come to us for a big celebration after a good game. When we had been seven years at The Nag’s head the owners, Flowers Breweries, decided that the village could only support one pub and they proposed to close The Chequers. A village petition was successfully organised in favour of retaining The Chequers, but The Nag’s Head went to the wall instead and I finally closed the door in 1966.