£

s

d

1701

Spent at Crosses with ye nebors about ye agreement of the cons common

2

6

As well as being used as a meeting place and a place of refreshment, The Cross was also a lodging house for travellers. Besides ordinary wayfarers, prisoners en route to gaol were taken care of at the inn (indeed, Jean Simmonds, the present occupant of the The Old Cross in Cross Lane, says there is evidence of bars in a beam in the present kitchen which may be physical evidence that prisoners on the way to court or gaol had been lodged at The Cross). The churchwardens’ accounts show us that watchers were provided with drinks...

The Cross was also the focus in the eighteenth century of the ceremony of "beating the bounds", a custom in Ascension week to walk and re-define the boundaries of the parish. It was carried out by the incumbent of the parish, the churchwardens, and parishioners. The occasion in Helmdon was called "Processing day" or "Cross Monday" in the churchwardens’ accounts, and it was a day, it seems, of holiday. There were three walks, the Southfield Walk being one. After each walk the village tradition was that a certain amount of drink was dispensed at "Crosses", paid for by the church...

To begin with The Cross carried on its business approximately where "Marriotts" is today and not in Cross Lane at "The Old Cross". When I first thought about this alehouse and its obvious importance to St Mary Magdalene in its early days as a meeting place to discuss and settle parish affairs, it seemed that a building situated in Cross Lane would have been very inconvenient, so that it was no surprise to me that in the first two hundred or so years of its existence it had occupied a more central place in the village. The evidence of an earlier location came from the l763 Plan of Estates of Magdalen College. A Mrs Jacklin rented "The Cross Inn Close and Premises" from Magdalen, and the house (or house and outbuildings) had eleven bays, so it was a substantial plot. Indentures, or lease agreements, tell us that another tenant, William Bayliss, who was also a farmer, had, as part of his l807 rent, to give an amount of "good sweet and merchantable wheat" and "one quarter four bushels and two pecks of good sweet malt" to be delivered "unto the President and Scholars .... in the Great Hall of Magdalen". In an 1813 Magdalen College Survey & Valuation of Several Estates at Helmdon a Mrs Bayliss held the same property and land, shown on the map as "a dwelling house yard Garden and close formerly ye Cross Inn". In 1817 a fire insurance certificate cites a dwelling occupied by William Bayliss, but the following phrase "known by the sign of the Cross" is crossed out. The same property and land appear on another Magdalen map, this time of 1889, with a cottage and garden shown, as well as "Cross Close".

So we have evidence that The Cross was originally on the north side of Wappenham Road near to its junction with the Sulgrave road, although whether it was directly on the "Marriotts" site has still to be determined. Ken and Marjorie Watson lived at "Marriotts" till not long ago, and Marjorie says that although the Miss Dunkleys said that it had originally been a pub she does not recollect hearing that from anyone else, and there was no evidence in the house (except, perhaps, for an unusually large cellar) although it is certainly an old one. However, sometime between 1763 and 1813 (I think earlier rather than later, and at the moment I can be no more specific than that) the alehouse moved to its better known location in Cross Lane.

Licensing records giving the name of The Cross begin in l798. Thomas Hinton, born in 1754, the son of Matthew Hinton, Yeoman, who lived at Manor House farm, was the alehouse keeper. Thomas was a farmer as well as a publican and, indeed, farming was almost certainly his main income. In 1807 we have a record that he stood surety for John Payne of The Chequers, so it seems there was camaraderie, not rivalry, between the two principal drinking houses. Not that this was unusual. It was a general trend. Many publicans were supportive of each other, partly to vouch that each kept a house of good repute. Thomas Hinton’s wife was named Frances, and they had two sons, John and George. Thomas’s father left £20 to his son in his will of 1793.

Henry Harris took over from Thomas in l8l9 and with the arrival of Nathaniel Pettifer in 1847, we find the alehouse keeper again having a dual occupation to boost his earnings. According to Whelan’s Trade Directory he was a butcher as well as an alehouse keeper and Jean Simmonds says that there is evidence of a room where slaughter took place. Things We Could Tell You About Helmdon reminds us that Cross Lane used to be called Pettifers Lane. Edward John Jeffery, who, according to the census, had six daughters, was the next landlord. He augmented his earnings by being a carrier as well as a butcher. Indeed, he did very well for himself. The 1881 census tells us that he was also a farmer with forty acres of land, employing four men and boys. He was followed by James Campin, and in l909, by George Brown, whose previous occupation had been as landlord of The Magpie which had closed down in the same year. Josephine Brown was fined £2 12s 0d plus 12s costs in July 1912 for selling intoxicating liquor to a drunken person. In August 1914 The Cross, too, ended its life as a public house. Hopcrofts of Brackley had owned the establishment since the early 1800’s.

Joyce Payne, born at The Cross in 1921, says that after its closure it was bought by her Aunt Nellie Wilcox for her Grannie Kelcher. Grannie Kelcher took in lodgers, and Joyce recalls that even after it closed, men came walking across the fields from Wappenham, asking for a drink, thinking it was still a public house. In 1943, to solve a dispute over right of way at the back of the property, Jean Simmonds recalls that Frank Watson, who had lived at the adjoining property in Cross Lane for thirty years, spoke of the track being used for bringing supplies to The Cross, with and without horses, carriages, carts, the motor car and other vehicles. Jean told me that there is no cellar in the property, which is unusual for a pub. She recounts the story that the floor of the bar and the roof of the cellar were rotten, and rather than carry out expensive repairs the cellar was filled in. There is a suggestion that there is somewhere a picture of many Helmdon residents barrowing rocks from the quarry pit at the top of the village to help with the project, but Jean says there is no firm evidence to back up this story.