Extract from Saltwater Village (1977) by Margaret Leather (pp80-84):
Opposite the Glebe to our right is the Rectory, very little changed over the years. Walking on a few yards we come to a post-war, Council housing site to the right, with a few privately owned houses on our left. One of these is now named ‘The Oaks’. It was formerly a public house and my father became the licensee late in 1909 or early 1910. We didn’t stay there very long and came back to one of the cottages in the High Street before war started in 1914. As a public house it was named The Royal Oak, and was quite a pleasant house. It had a small oak tree outside the front entrance, which led to the parlour. To this room on a Saturday evening came several men of the village, for a chat and a drink. It was quite comfortable with a large table in the centre, fitted across the top with black leather cloth and standing on it would be one glass and one blue jug, white lipped, more or less in line with each chair. It was here that a number of my uncles who were yacht captains would also come on a Saturday evening. They always smoked cigars and I thought the aroma lovely. The entrance to the tap room and bottle-and-jug departments was by side door; tap room to the left, bottle-and-jug to the right, and a billiard room upstairs immediately above the tap room. There were times when trade was very good and times when it could be very slack, especially in the daytime. I took no part in serving in the bars, for one thing I was too young to do so. At weekends the tap room did good business and many men came over from Fingringhoe including one farm worker, Old Thompson as he was called by everyone. He would sing the songs of the countryside and at the end of each one did a clog dance. He would repeat this each time he came, to the amusement of the customers. We had in the tap room a Keith Prowse pianola and when Id was put in the slot it would play a tune that you chose by dialling a certain number. Strangely enough, the only tune I can remember is “Boiled Beef and Carrots’, which was rather brash but went down well with the customers and if Old Thompson was present he would be on his feet again in his hobnailed boots, dancing away in the same clothes he had probably worked in during his long day in the fields. After that, some would play darts or sing a song or two, drinking of course all the while.
In summer some men chose to play quoits on the stretch of land that adjoined the entrance and was owned by the brewers, Charrington Nichol and Company. The quoits pitch was about twelve yards long with a clay covered patch at one end about two feet square. In the middle of this patch was a stake which stuck up about six inches above the surface and over this the players tried to throw their quoit, which was an iron ring weighing perhaps six pounds.
Once a month it was pay-in night for those who were members of the Slate Club, Mr Southgate was its secretary and as usual with such clubs it was share-out time shortly before Christmas.
In those days several public houses delivered previously ordered beer or porter in cans hung on a long piece of wood, four to five feet long, with nicks cut into its top at regular intervals for the can handles to be slotted into. Delivery time was just before 11 a.m. and again around 7 o’clock in the evening. Boys who were temporarily out of a job would do the rounds and there came a time when I took the job on too, so off I would set down West Street to call at the houses of the people who had ordered the drink. Most asked me indoors while they emptied the can and gave it back to me. Up the other side of West Street I would go delivering to other houses there and then, for me, it was back to The Royal Oak, to put the orders for Chapel Street on the stick. Then down the road I could be seen walking towards Chapel Street, first down one side and up the other. ‘he delivery completed, I came back up the road with the empty cans, my job done except for washing up the cans, which had to be kept very clean and bright, and rubbed with silver sand to make them shine. Now I am certainly not inferring or suggesting that drink was supplied to practically every house. In fact many people were dead against all alcoholic drinks, and these cans of beer and porter were delivered only to people who had ordered them.
I was living at The Oak in 1911 when Halley’s Comet was supposed to appear in the sky to the north west. Many of the inhabitants stayed up watching until late at night, our family included, but the comet never appeared.
John Spitty had been the licensee of The Royal Oak around the 1890s. He was a noted salvager, smuggler and fisherman, who fished from Rowhedge in his various smacks for a number of years. His smuggling led him to use many hiding places for his goods. Eventually he began to use one of the bedrooms to conceal boxes of smuggled Dutch cigars, building them up in furniture-like form which he then covered over with a chintz cloth and stood a mirror on top, with various dressing table accessories to complete the deception. The customs men suspected his cigar smuggling and searched The Oak. Mrs Spitty showed them into the rooms and cellars, and the so-called dressing table evidently escaped detection, but Mrs Spitty refused to let Jack hide any more smuggled goods in The Oak, so he must have found other hiding places, for smuggling in those days was not considered a social disgrace and very many local people were involved in one way or another.
I have been told many stories of Jack Spitty. When he wanted a quantity of coal he sailed his smack near an anchored collier brig or barge, off the coast, and shouted the apparently nonsensical question “Can you dress a hat?” The skipper of the collier, knowing what he meant, called to him to come alongside. Then the collier crew would open up the hatches and pass coal into Jack’s hold, while his smack’s crew gave them all the fish they wanted. The coal was used to fire the smack’s shrimp boiler and for the cabin stove. I have heard it said that Jack Spitty’s favourite saying was “If you were born to be drowned you wouldn’t be hung”! He was a hardy seaman and once his smack was caught in a fierce North Sea gale, so strong that they set a storm jib at the mast instead of the mainsail. Jack battened the crew down below and took the helm himself. A big wave washed him overboard but the next one washed him back and when the alarmed crew came on deck they were off the Island of Heligoland.
There came a day when it was decided we would leave The Royal Oak and the licence was transferred to a Mr Cassell, early in 1913.