The Hurdler, Stamford, Lincolnshire (updated October 2020)

The Hurdler is one of only two classic estate pubs which remain in the upmarket town of Stamford (the other being the nearby Danish Invader, the Drum & Monkey and Northfields both having closed since this was originally posted in 2012) A large, open-plan locals pub with a central bar that I've no doubt would have been multi-room originally. Built to serve the needs of the post war housing which surrounds it, and like most pubs that are firmly embedded in their local communities, the Hurdler is a sport and games pub through and through. In fact the pub is named after a local sporting hero David Cecil (Lord Burghley), gold medallist at the 1928 Olympics in Amsterdam. A sprightly hurdling gentleman on the pubs swinging sign commemorates his athletic prowess.

Cribbage, Darts, Dominoes, and Pool are the principal league games played at the Hurdler today, but the pub also field a team in Stamfords unique Pushpenny League. The league is currently running with just six pubs/clubs, a parlous state for any pub game league to be in. Let's hope the pubs of Stamford can keep this game going where others have sadly fallen by the wayside.

Update October 2020

Another sparse post from the early days of this blog, featuring a pub that I've been meaning to revisit for some time. In fact I have revisited The Hurdler a couple of times since then, just not with a camera in tow. So, what's new at The Hurdler?

Well it's had a bit of a refurb, though nothing too drastic. In fact I didn't notice any changes at all until I compared these photographs, so think more spruced-up than knocked about. As seems to be the case throughout their estate, Everards have ditched their familiar green livery for a slightly less 'corporate' blue, though thankfully they haven't gone the whole hog and painted everything pastel grey!

The most noticeable changes to the Hurdler on this most recent visit were the alterations for social distancing. The most notable being the ugly (and now entirely unnecessary given that the rules have changed to table service only!) Perspex screens across the bar servery, as well as a bit of floor tape around the sensibly spaced tables. The way things are looking at the moment, these are here to stay, though hopefully not for ever. It's a roomy pub inside anyway and with plenty of front and back garden space, so social distancing was hardly an issue on the late-Summer afternoon when I popped in for a pint. The recent 10pm curfew and enforced table service had been confirmed that day and was much more of a concern to the licensees. Wet-led estate pubs like this do more trade than most in the run-up to last orders, and the feeling was that this will hit their crucial weekend trade very hard indeed.

As you can see from these images, the Hurdler might be regarded as Stamfords premier games pub. In far better times than these the pub fields teams in all the local leagues, with match nights occurring throughout the week. Womens Darts and Pushpenny feature on Tuesday nights, Pool and Cribbage on Wednesday, with Mens Darts and Dominoes filling the Thursday slot. Needless to say, none of these leagues are currently operating, a particularly tough situation for pubs like the Hurdler which rely on the steady weekday trade that games bring throughout the year, particularly during the Winter months when the attractive garden to the rear of the pub is out of action.

I'm not entirely sure whether Darts and Pool were still being played at the Hurdler at the time I visited. Certainly not on a quiet midweek afternoon with just a small group of locals holding court near the bar. With table service now the rule, even these non-contact games are effectively barred from the pub, putting the three Dartboards at the Hurdler out of use for the time being.

The following images are from the original post back in 2012. At this time there were a couple of Pushpenny Boards in the bar, and of course the local Stamford Pushpenny League was up and running from around Autumn until early Summer. The league is currently defunct owing to social distancing rules, but has shrunk even further since my original blog post. The 2019/20 league fixtures (above) show the league running with just four teams from three pubs in the town, which by any standards represents a traditional pub game on the verge of extinction, a sad situation given that the Stamford League is one of only two for the game of Pushpenny in the country. Whether it will survive this latest setback remains to be seen.

These two Pushpenny Boards were kept in the bar when I visited back in 2012. Needless to say there's no sign of them now. The nearest was in regular use, made from a single piece of Mahogany and with a beautifully polished surface which is typical of these locally made competition boards. The other board is a little more workmanlike, and is in fact the reverse of a commercial Shove Ha'penny board (below). The principle difference between a Pushpenny Board and the more common Shove Ha'penny is the spacing of the nine beds, significantly wider in Pushpenny to accommodate the larger Pennies used in the Stamford game. The sloping run-off at the rear of this Pushpenny board can be clearly seen in the image above, a feature rarely seen in Shove Ha'penny but typical of these handmade Stamford boards.