Dukes Arms, Woodford, Northamptonshire

The renaming of pubs is a controversial subject, more often than not incurring the wrath of traditionalists and locals alike. I have to say that I'm not a fan of name changes, or unnecessary refurbishments for that matter. A lick of paint and a good polish is as far as anyone needs to go in my view, and as for the great British swinging pub sign, well these should be treated as heritage assets and either left well alone or sympathetically restored.

Needless to say I'm in the minority in this regard, and yes, I'm well aware that most pubs we might regard as 'unspoilt' have in fact been radically restructured at some point in their lives, and of course pub names have been changing for centuries to reflect local and nationally historical events. I just can't help thinking they did it a bit better back then.

There are of course many exceptions. Take the subject of this post for example, a pub hitherto known as The Dukes Arms, and prior to that The Falcon Inn, The Lord St John's Arms, and The Lords Arms before the appendages were amputated. Unnecessary change we might imagine, yet hardly unique. My own local the Royal George in Cottingham is known by all and sundry as The George, the now closed Spread Eagle in the village was always truncated to The Spread, and even the long closed Red Lion in Middleton was generally referred to as The Red by locals. What chance thirsty Woodford folk arranged to meet-up for pints at the Dukes Arms? Not likely I'd imagine, particularly given that abbreviating to "The Dukes" saves a few seconds of precious extra drinking time when opening hours were necessarily limited. In truth it's surprising that any 'Arms', 'Heads', or indeed 'Horses' have survived at all in pub names given that they're so rarely used by the locals.

The only truly acceptable change in my view is that which serves to revive a moribund boozer, or genuinely enhance local usage. Because a village local that isn't shaped by the quirks and interests of the locals to some degree, or indeed reflect the character and eccentricities of the licensees, can hardly be regarded as a local at all. Clearly The Dukes in Woodford is every inch the village local, and a remarkably busy one at that, or it certainly was on the Thursday afternoon I visited.

In common with so many rural and village pubs, the Dukes has had the custom of three pubs squeezed into one. The Prince of Wales and White Horse have both gone for good in recent years leaving the Dukes as the only pub in what is a fairly substantial Northamptonshire village. The Working Mens Club is also still going strong though, reinvented on a shiny new site as the village's Community & Sports Club. New it may be but the traditions of old have been maintained with two Skittles Tables in the well-appointed games room.

Long regarded as being the oldest pub in the village, the Dukes was probably a Phipps Brewery house at one time given that the pub still sports a Watney Mann Brewery 'George & Dragon' swinging sign. These are still quite common in the county, part of the wholesale rebranding of the Phipps NBC pub estate when the brewery was acquired by Watney Mann in 1960.

The pub is well and truly free of tie now, and with a glowing reputation for its beer range which is what drew me back to Woodford recently. In fact this post on the The Dukes has been gathering dust on my hard drive for a few years now, the games room photos below taken over ten years ago. A midweek pint on the way home from nearby Thrapston offered the opportunity to take a few more photos and wrap up a pub I knew would be well worth a revisit. 

The Dukes is one of many attractive ironstone pubs in this part of the county, as traditional a Northamptonshire village local as you could hope to find. The interior could perhaps be best described as 'eccentric' though. Quirkiness abounds throughout the pub, from the fabulous glitzy stage in what was originally the games area, to the opulent smoking shelter which comes with its very own wood burner, and a sprawling garden complete with a rare Monkey Tree! It would be wrong to judge the Duke's only on its eccentricities though, this is still a traditional village local firmly rooted in the community that it serves so well.

So the Games Room was moved upstairs several years ago, all the better to preserve the peaceful ambiance of the main bar area, reserved for village gossip and the quiet contemplation of The Dukes' numerous ales. Darts, Pool, and Northamptonshire Table Skittles rub along noisily upstairs, though how much of the play is competitive in leagues these days I couldn't say.

As you can see above, the fixture list for league play in the Islip & District Skittles League was busy enough in the 2012/13 season, with two divisions and twenty teams slogging it out through the Winter months. But as we all know, the intervening ten years have been ones of huge upheaval in the licensed trade, and even a cursory glance of the teams reveals at least two closed pubs.

One is the aforementioned Prince of Wales in the village, the other the Kings Head in Wadenhoe, a long-term closed pub that's currently on the market so will hopefully reopen at some point. Even The Dukes own 'B' team seem to have been scratched from the list as the season progressed, not unusual for a league, but perhaps a sign of things to come for a traditional pub game that we know has been in decline for some years now.

I do know that the Islip & District League is still going strong though having seen play quite recently at one of my closest Corby pubs The Domino, a welcome return of Skittles to the Town that I hope to cover on here soon. The Islip & District is now probably the most important league for Skittles in North Northamptonshire, covering an area centred not so much on tiny Islip itself, but one of the strongholds of the game in nearby Kettering. Long may it and great pubs like The Dukes continue in one form or another.

Midland Band Social Club, Kettering, Northamptonshire

It's been a while since I last explored the post-COVID pub games scene. It's not for lack of interest though, more the increasing difficulty and expense of visiting far-flung places and finding the pubs I'm aiming for are actually open! Pubs of most shapes and sizes remain a passion though, and rarely a week goes by that I don't visit a few in the course of a good walk or social day out.

It's noticeable that behaviours continue to change around pub going. Queuing at the bar seems to have persisted in the wake of the pandemic, much to the chagrin of some, though of all the changes it's one of the least concerning to me. More notable is the substantially reduced trade and trading hours during weekdays, lunchtime and afternoons in particular which just happen to be my favourite pubbing times. Levels of trade and relentlessly spiralling costs are dictating pub opening times like no other, because there's no point a licensee opening up, paying staff, lighting and heating a building, maybe even running a kitchen when there's little chance of covering your costs. It's long been the case that outside of towns and cities it's rare to find a pub open on a Monday, but it's now often the same for Tuesdays and Wednesdays, even extending as far as Thursday in some cases. The sad fact is that for many of us, pub-going has become mainly a weekend only affair, often by choice but increasingly it's necessity.

The lockdowns that blighted the pub trade during the pandemic have inevitably left a legacy of further decline in pub games participation. Many games that were considered too risky to play under social distancing rules were effectively removed from the bar, more often than not merely put into storage, ready to return to the bar in better times, but sadly the disruption to many leagues has had the effect of accelerating the decline of formal competition. Many leagues have shrunk, some even folded, and the games themselves have sometimes gone from the bar for good. All this and more has made the task of documenting our precious pub games traditions ever more difficult, and I'd have to say that the ever increasing cost and unreliability of public transport hasn't helped in this regard, in many cases I've simply been priced out of the kind of travel needed to do our national pastimes the justice they deserve.

There are of course plenty enough exceptions where traditional games continue to be popular, and when one falls practically on my own doorstep it would be remiss of me not to get back on the horse, charge up the camera, and sing its praises with a blog post.

Kettering sits close to the northern limit of the Northamptonshire Table Skittles tradition, yet remains at its very heart as far as participation is concerned, although you'd be hard pressed to notice as much on a visit to the town centre these days. Skittles Tables have gone in recent years from the recently closed Harlequin and Three Cocks pubs, as well as the heavily refurbished Market Inn, leaving only the Alexandra near the town centre as a solid and reliable Table Skittles pub. It's also a firm favourite for beer locally and happily opens throughout the week from early afternoon, midday at the weekend. As with many towns and cities, to find the local pub games you have to travel out to pubs and clubs in the suburbs and housing estates.

Equally popular for its great beer, and also conveniently open all day every day, is the Midland Band Social Club. Located a little way out of the the centre, it's just a short walk through Kettering's old terraced housing, and much of the town's remaining Boot & Shoe manufacturing heritage to the north of the town. As the name suggests, the club was originally established as a home for one of the town's Silver Bands in 1896. Back then a small outdoor Beerhouse served Northampton brewed Phipps ales, today the much expanded club might almost be regarded as a local 'Tap' for the nearby Potbelly Brewery, and the bar is perhaps second only for choice of ales to the Alex'.

In common with almost every club I've been to recently, the Midland Band is a tidy and very well run club with a fully subscribed membership. The bar area leads through to a sizeable function room, and at the back is a similarly impressive Games Room. The early years of the club are notable for success in Billiards and Snooker, as evidenced by numerous old photographs of successful teams and players. The Billiards Tables appear to be long gone from the club though of course Kettering is still in the spotlight for cue sports with the recent success of local professional Snooker player Kyren Wilson.

Latterly the club is better known for it's Bowls Club which plays on the Recreation Ground Green just across the road, and with a current membership of around 1000! Perhaps not quite so popular but well catered for nevertheless are teams for Darts, Pool, and that most local of Northamptonshire games Table Skittles which includes teams for Mens, Ladies, and Mixed leagues. All these games command their own discreet space in the games room, though hopefully they're not all played together given the noise levels, although it's notable that the Skittles Table sits in it's own netted cage so at least other players will be safe enough from flying boxwood cheeses.