Quarryman's Arms

The Quarryman’s Arms Sofia Willicombe and Claire Dimond Mills July 2024

Quarryman’s Arms in 1940s with Flossie & Bill Stevens front right (courtesy Bob Hancock)

The Quarryman’s Arms, Box Hill, is a traditional pub, beloved of local residents and located obscurely for passers-by, and considered an outstanding example of a classic English pub. Yet its story is complex and convoluted. This article attempts to explain its story.

The history of pub names has been an English drinker’s obsession since Richrd II made compulsory the hanging of signs outside private houses which sold beer. To make it easy for royal ale-tasters (who were often illiterate) to name and fine defaulting houses, many of the signs were colourful depictions of their name. That doesn’t fully explain the name of the Quarryman’s Arms, however.

The name of the pub is often the biggest clue to its origin. In the case of the Quarryman’s Arms it has always been assumed it was a pub for the quarrymen who lived and worked in the area around Box Hill. But is that the case and if so when did it become a pub?

Original back wall of the pub showing, the early building split into three. Above is an undercroft where the Heads would have slept (courtesy Claire Dimond Mills)

Pub Origins
On the 1836 Tithe Apportionment map, the building, plot 387a, was split into three and was owned jointly by children of James and Sarah Head, Joseph (born 1785), Gifford/Jefford (born 1787) and Hester (born 1793). The Head family had lived on Box Hill probably for generations and Gifford also owned plot 385, now called Rustic Cottage and 385a, Rose Cottage. Gifford was a quarryman and Joseph an agricultural labourer.

When Gifford died in 1847, Joseph inherited his portion and the property which was now split into two with Joseph and his wife Mary Head in one of the cottages, and their daughter Elizabeth and her husband William Gingell in the other. Interestingly, on 2 February 1847, Joseph took out a mortgage for £100 on the property from Abraham Hazeland, a brewer who owned a brewery in Shaw. In 1851, Joseph called himself beer-house keeper in the census, perhaps implying that Joseph took the loan in order to turn his house into a pub from which he could serve beer from Hazeland’s Shaw Brewery?

During the building of Box Tunnel, the enormity of the seam of Box stone was realised and in the 1850s there was a surge in people renting land from Northey to sink shafts to dig out the stone. This increase in quarrying meant an increase in quarry workers and perhaps an ageing Joseph saw an opportunity to make money by providing food and drink to the men who worked in the quarries.

Joseph died in 1852, and his will stated that his entire property would be bequeathed to his wife Mary and then on her death, split between their seven children - Gifford, James, Joseph, George, Elizabeth, Ann (wife of John Chandler) and Lydia (who married William Woodman). Rather than split the property into seven, the family decided to sell the properties to Thomas Cannings, who had acquired Shaw Brewery and the Head’s debt after Abraham Hazeland’s death.[1] Thomas Canning owned the pub until 1899 and let it out to tenants to run it.

Indenture between the Head family and Thomas Cannings, 1852 (courtesy Ancestry.com)

Carpenter’s Arms
An early tenant was Henry Bunting, shoemaker, who was landlord in the pub from 1864 to 1871. After him Thomas Bunting (born 1803 in Little Rissington, Gloucestershire) took the tenancy from 1871 to 1880. Thomas had also trained as a shoemaker and previously traded at Walcot, Bath. Their relationship is uncertain, but possibly Henry and Thomas were related. In 1871 Thomas, his wife Sarah and their family lived in the premises and they renamed the pub the Carpenter’s Arms.[2] We don’t know why this should be. Perhaps they aspired to a broader clientele than quarrymen, particularly during periods of recession in the building industry when cronies of quarrymen gathered for social get-togethers in the snug but couldn’t afford much beer.

In this period the pub was not listed in Kelley’s Directory like other Box hostelries, the Queen’s Head and The Bear. Unlike these premises the Quarryman’s Arms/ Carpenter’s Arms was licensed as a beer-house rather than as an inn. It could only serve liquor fermented with malt (beer) and no wine or spirits. Nestling amongst the houses of quarry workers and by-passed by the turnpike roads of A4 and Beech Road, the pub struggled to get passing trade which may explain why it does not have a presence or prominent position like other Box premises, the Bear, the Queens Head and The Lamb.

Hancock Family
From 1889, Thomas Hancock and his wife, Julia, were running the tenancy of the Quarryman's Arms. Thomas had been born in Ashley in 1861 and in 1881 he was lodging at the Shop on the Road at Townsend and working as a labourer at the Stone Works. He married Julia Baker from Colerne in 1882. They had four children: Florence (born 1884), Lottie (1886-), Fred (1889-) and Ada F (1890-).

In September 1894 Julia died aged 33 years, leaving Thomas with four children under ten years whilst trying to run his business as a publican and quarryman. To help manage the pub and the children, Sarah Ann Hemmings moved into the premises from the Chippenham Workhouse, together with her three children.

Thomas is listed as the licensee of the pub for forty years after 1884 but it was the wives, Julia and Sarah, who managed the business every day whilst Thomas had other employments. His main job was in the quarries where he owned twelve horses (pit ponies) for haulage of stone underground. In the 1911 census he called himself Publican and general haulier.
It was a family duty to help run the pub. In the early hours of the morning Sarah would lock up the children in the building and take two barrels of beer on a yoke to the men in the quarries. The youngest children would tend to the horses, stabled at The Court, Box Hill.

Sarah Ann Hancock (courtesy Bob Hancock)

Sarah in front at Saltbox Farm (courtesy Bob Hancock)

Farming Requisitions
As well as these jobs, Thomas tenanted two farms at Saltbox and Millsplatt. He needed the farms to obtain provisions of hay and straw for the horses which were kept underground for months.

At some point Thomas and Sarah were married and together they had six more children:[3] Thomas M (1896-), Elsie F (1897-), Herbert M (1901-), Nellie (1902-) and Percy John (1904-1984).

The pub changed ownership during Thomas’ tenure with Thomas Cannings selling it to G & T Spencer’s Brewery, Bradford-on-Avon, in 1899. George and Thomas Spencer, as well as their brother John, were tenant farmers in the Bradford area who had inherited the brewery from their father Walter. He had obtained it when the original owner Emmanuel Baily went bankrupt.[4] In 1899, the Spencer brothers took out a considerable mortgage with Colonel Codrington to buy over fifty pubs including the Quarryman’s. But the brothers had overextended themselves and were soon in financial trouble, not helped by their managing director being caught falsifying documents. The company was auctioned in 1914 and its properties were bought by Usher’s Brewery of Trowbridge for £56,000.[5]

With a pub full of working men, the Quarryman’s had its fair share of drunk and disorderly customers. In February 1883, John Vivash, quarryman, was fined £4 for being disorderly and refusing to quit the pub. William Butler was fined £1 plus costs in 1886 for refusing to quit. These are just two that made the papers, but I am sure there were many more instances! Thomas himself was in trouble in 1903 for selling beer in an unsealed vessel to six-year-old Gwendoline Greenman.[6]

Thomas and Sarah Ann retired from running the Quarryman’s in 1917 and by 1920 were farming at Gorse Farm, Box Hill. But that did not end the Hancock connexion as Thomas’s eldest daughter Florence became the next tenant, having married William (Bill) Arthur Stevens in 1909. William was a banker mason and worked for Lamberts Stoneyard, located down at Box Railway Station. Bill and Florence had three children Arthur (known as Rubble), Phyllis and Gladys. In 1949 the managed to get a licence for the pub to serve wine on the grounds that ladies like to have something better than (beer).[7]

When Bill died in 1954 (cremated at Arnos Grove, Bristol), he had been landlord of the Quarryman’s Arms for thirty-nine years and a banker mason for fifty!

Thomas & Sarah Hancock (unknown attribution)

Bill and Florence’s youngest daughter Gladys married Herbert (Bert) Ernest Tinson in 1940. He was born in 1914 in Box and worked as a freestone sawyer. He took over the pub from his father-in-law in 1954 and was the landlord until 1964. In 1962 the pub got into the newspapers when a nest of swallows called time on their nesting in the overhang of the bar.[8] It was a relief to Bert, who had to open and shut the windows of the pub repeatedly to accommodate their needs. He lived on long after, dying in 1990 and buried at Box Cemetery. It was during Bert and Gladys’s tenure that Ushers brewery was bought by Watney Mann, a large London brewing company. In turn, they were bought out by Grand Metropolitan in 1972, who traded under the name Chef & Brewer Ltd. After Bert retired there was a brief period when Frank Douglas Coleman from Bath ran the pub from 1964-1967 and then Frank Thomas Duggan from Bristol from 1967-68.

Bob and Lauri with customer Mr C Moon in 1972 (courtesy Bob Hancock)

In November 1968, Robert Frederick (Bob) Hancock took over. Bob’s parents were Percy Hancock, youngest son of Thomas and Sarah Ann Hancock and Marjorie Hawkins from London! The pub returned to the Hancock line. Bob’s memoirs feature in a book A Wiltshire Lad: An autobiography of Bob Hancock and in it he talks about how run down the pub was when he took over and how hard they worked to involve the community in resurrecting it. At this time the quarries were being closed and the equipment disposed of. Bob and Lauri preserved many quarrymen's saws and picks, which you can still see displayed at the pub. Bob and Lauri left the pub in 1974 and the next tenant was John Allen.

Above: The Quarryman's was originally a simple residential building (courtesy Rose Ledbury).
Below: The pub in more recent times (courtesy Carol Payne)

In 1988 John and Ginny Arundel took over and established its commercial viability when many others were closed. The era of quarrying was long over and visitors to the area were few. The Arundels turned the premises towards local families and began a series of charitable fundraising activities, including The Cancer Research Big Breakfast, Box Hill Christmas Parties, Winter Warmer Fundraisers, raffles galore and hosting the annual July Pig & A Jig. They also attracted customers from outside the hamlet with directions to the premises from the A4. The pub started to offer bed and breakfast facilities using the attraction of magnificent views down Box Valley from the rear extension and developing outdoor garden seating. The pub was sold to Butcombe Brewery in 2022 and John and Ginny retired.

Conclusion
The story of the Quarryman’s Arms is fascinating. In many respects it mirrors the history of the village with sudden quarrying wealth exploding into a rural society and the disastrous consequences of the loss of the economic viability when the source of the wealth was exhausted. The vibrancy of the modern Quarryman’s Arms shows what can be achieved despite adversity.

Hancock Family Tree
John Hancock (b 17 June 1810), labourer, married Elizabeth Newman (b 16 January 1811). Both came from Box. Children included George Dovey (1837-1877), Maria Ann (1838-), John (1841-), Joseph & Mary twins (1843-), Edward (1845-), Elizabeth (1846-), Alfred (1849-) and James (1851-).

George Dovey Hancock (1837-1877) of Box married 3 April 1859 Martha Matilda Cosh (1838-1921) of Kilmersdon, Somerset. In 1871 George started work as an agricultural labourer but was called a mason at Ashley at the time of his death. Children:

Eliza (b 1859);
Thomas Dovey Hancock (20 February 1861-1936 at Saltbox House);
Charlotte M (b 1863);
John Charles (b 1866);
Arthur George (b 1868);
Mary Ann (b 1873); and
Frederick Robert (1874-1937)

Thomas Dovey Hancock (1861-1936) married his first wife, Julia Ellen Baker (-1894) in 1882. Children:

Florence Ellen (1883-1957 at Arnos Vale, Bristol) married William (Bill) Arthur Stevens (1884-1954) in 1909, Children Arthur (known as Rubble), Phyllis and Gladys who married Herbert Ernest Tinson (1914-1990) in 1940;
Lottie M (1885-) married Francis RM Wood in 1910;
Frederick George Thomas (4 January 1888-1968) married Ella Wheeler in 1926. He was described as sawyer in 1936; and
Ada F (1890-).

Thomas’ second wife was Sarah Ann Hemmings (1858-1949). Children:

Thomas M (1896-);
Elsie F (1897-);
Herbert M (1900-),
Nellie (1902-); and
Percy John (1904-1984) married Renee Marjorie Hawkins (1914-1978) of St Marylebone, London. Percy was working as a dairyman in 1936. Children: Mike (b 1936); Herbie (b 1938): Bob & twin Charlie (b 1941); Dave (1952-).

References
[1] http://westcountrybottles.co.uk/mike4/Companies/Shaw.html
[2] The name of the pub also reverted to the Carpenter’s Arms in the 1970s (courtesy Alan Payne)
[3] They appeared to have married in 1904
[4] https://www.bradfordonavonmuseum.co.uk/spencers
[5] https://www.bradfordonavonmuseum.co.uk/spencers
[6] Wiltshire Telegraph 17 October 1903
[7] The Wiltshire News, 4 February 1949
[8] The Wiltshire News, 24 August 1962

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