Taste of village pubs' rich historyoffered at gallery's exhibition

FEW places have a history as rich and varied as a village pub, as a new exhibition in the East Riding shows.

Two of the area’s oldest watering holes have joint claims to being the venue where the notorious highwayman Dick Turpin was finally run to ground in the 18th century.

Turpin was living at the Green Dragon in Welton under the name John Palmer, and after a drunken shooting party took offence to a comment that he “couldn’t shoot a barnyard fowl”.

He promptly shot a cockerel belonging to the landlord and was arrested, although it is not clear if this was at the Green Dragon or at the Ferry Inn at Brough.

Put on trial in York, Turpin admitted his true identity and was hanged in April 1739.

The story is one of many being told in an exhibition entitled Our Village Pubs, in the Rural Life Gallery at Skidby Mill until February. The display shows how pubs have changed from being coaching inns to humble ale houses in a spare room.

The King’s Head in Hedon is the oldest surviving Georgian building in the town and still has a stone outside that was installed to protect it from the wheels of horse-driven coaches.

Jean Ross, volunteer at the Rural Life Project, said: “There is a lot of history in pubs and they have always had to adapt to survive.”