The Brickmakers Arms Public House Kempston Hardwick
The former Brickmakers Arms October 2007
Brickmakers Arms Beerhouse: Woburn Road, Kempston Hardwick
This public house lay just inside the modern parish boundary of Stewartby. Bedfordshire & Luton Archives & Records Service does not have much in the way of records for the Brickmakers Arms. It was a Charles Wells house which began life as a beerhouse before becoming fully licensed on 1 Mar 1951.
In 1927 Bedfordshire was valued under the Rating Valuation Act 1925; every piece of land and building was valued to determine the rates to be paid on it. The valuer discovered the accommodation consisted of a sitting room, parlour (or tap room), kitchen and cellar downstairs with 3 bedrooms above and outside an earth closet, barn ["big"], stable for two horses, scullery and two "little stores". Trade was not brisk at only one barrel and a dozen bottles of beer per week. The beerhouse stood in 2.613 acres. The valuer was not impressed, noting: "Miserable situation & house no cottages &c. near".
The public house closed in the 1990s and became a private house. It lay at the end of a long lay-by on the busy A421 until the relief road was built and opened in the winter of 2010 when the road became considerably less busy! At the time of writing [2011] the property is derelict.
The former Brickmakers Arms seen from the layby October 2007
Sources:
- DV1/C/2: rating valuation: 1927;
- Z1105/1: liquor licence traders survey form: 1960
List of Licensees: note that this is not a complete list. Italics indicate licensees whose beginning and/or end dates are not known:
1903-1904: Thomas Copperwheat;
1904-1906: Thomas Giggle;
1906-1912: George William Copperwheat;
1912-1913: Harry Miller;
1913-1915: Arthur Perry;
1915-1936: Albert Deadman;
1940: William Bain;
1960-1975: Leslie Simeon Linsell;
1975-1976: Allan Irwin Preston;
1976-1980: Maurice Graham Oliver;
1980-1982: Patrick John Munnelly;
1982-1991: Patrick Anthony Lennon;
1991-1993: Jeanette Rosalie Palmer;
1993: Paul Elystan White-Archer