Members can now post any information on Yapton and District Cottage Gardeners Society web site’s history page. Any photos of past members or old photos of Yapton in general are welcomed. We need pictures and stories of the Land Army that Yapton experienced during the early forties. Plus details of the affect of Ford Airfield had on the Local community.

Yapton on the web

The Church of St. Mary’s at Yapton. View full history of this 13th century church and photos.

History in the drinking...

Recently I've been forced into visiting a number of Public Houses ...al! in the name of "research" you understand! Pub names generally fall into one of three groups: (i) the monarchy (e.g. The George or the most popular English pub name The Crown), (ii) wildlife (e.g. Fox and Hounds, The Swan, etc.), or (iii) the locality (e.g. The Steyne). While the pubs themselves may have a history, these names are relatively uninteresting. Occasionally however, pubs have more unusual names hiding a more curious meaning. Most Yaptonians will know we are endowed with four pubs in the village (rather unusual in itself to have so many!). The Lamb Inn was first recorded as a "beerhouse" in the 1871 census, selling cider pressed from the neighboring orchard. As with most beerhouses it evolved from a farmer's cottage, parts of which can still be identified among the later additions to the building.
The Shoulder of Mutton and Cucumbers once appeared in the Guinness Book of Records as the longest pub name in Britain but where does the name originate? The earliest reference I have found is in court proceedings from 1732 where the witness said she had, "A Shoulder of Mutton and Cucumbers" for her supper. However, I can find no references to how to cook it! Was the cucumber a garnish added after cooking or perhaps a pickle or sauce? It seems more likely that the cucumber was a staple food (remember that the potato wasn't widespread until after 1780) so was probably eaten in bulk rather than as a trimming or in a salad! If anyone has a recipe for this dish then please let me know.
Until recently, The Olive Branch was, of course, called The Black Dog - and is still called that by most locals! The Black Dog is a fairly common name for a pub but there's a suggestion this one dates back to the time when smuggling was widespread in this area in the mid-1700s. The smuggling was controlled by two gangs: the Hawkhurst gang under their leader Thomas Kingsmill and the Goodhursts. Kingsmill had a large and vicious black dog which used to warn him if anyone set an ambush. The story continues that the Hawkhurst gang frequently drank in this pub and its possibly named after this very dog. But is this pub really that old? I think I need to do some research in the beer cellar to gather evidence!
Little is known of the history of the Maypole Inn but does anyone know anything about the derivation of the name? Did the May Day celebrations actually take place in it's grounds? Until recently there was no village green as such so was the focus of the village actually in North End and the area surrounding the Maypole? Until the 1950s, most people lived in North End, Church Rd/Church Lane/Main Rd or B!Isham Rd. so you would expect the "Mutton" or the Black Dog to be a more centrally located place for village events.
Oh, and one more question. Since most of the area around Yapton was arable farming, why then do sheep appear in two of the pub names? The Sussex downland was popular sheep country and was presumably the source of meat for most of the population - not many cows or pigs around at the time? If anyone knows the answers to any of these questions, I'll be pleased to hear from them.
Geoff Westcott
Yapton & Ford Local History Group

There is a Sussex saying which applied to people from many of its villages but somehow it seems to have applied to Yapton most of all - 'those who don't shut doors, come from Yapton'. There are several origins for the saying. One story is that a calf got its neck wedged through a barred gate. The only logical thing to do to free it, seemed to be the drastic step of cutting its head off, and for ever after that the Yapton farmer involved decreed his gates to be always left open.

Another explanation is that in the days of the window tax, a certain gentleman of Yapton had most of his bricked-up. This of course made the house extremely dark so the servants had no choice but to leave doors open to admit light. Apparently in more recent times when a boy left a door open at school, his teacher told him that he must come from Yapton to which he replied 'Yes, I do - but how did you know?' The old Yapton bell rhyme seems very appropriate:

Ghost stories seem rare here which is rather unusual for Sussex. There is one where people believed the sound of polka music could sometimes be heard in the lanes leading in and out of Yapton but the reason for this is not clear. No-one seems to know how or why this originated but there were other quaint tales & traditions that more than made up for a lack of dragons & ghosts.

The oddly named Shoulder of Mutton and Cucumber pub once appeared in the Guiness Book of Records as the longest pub name in Britain but didn’t rate a mention in The English Pub, first published in 1976. At this inn, a Yapton thatcher named Marley was supposed to have sold his wife to a local ratcatcher for seven shillings and sixpence and a quart of beer in 1898. One assumes his need of the amber liquid was greater than that of having a spouse but just supposing the wife and ratcatcher were already ‘an item’, then the thatcher was very clever indeed, obtaining money and goods to have her taken off his hands! If on the other hand the wife was forcibly sold & preferred the status of a thatcher to a ratcatcher.

In more recent times, the May Day holiday has seen the annual pram race round two and a half miles of village streets in Yapton. At The Lamb pub, a rather more modern game was played at the end of 1983 – assegai throwing. These were actually a kind of lightweight African spear, the idea being to throw them as far as possible, and all for charity.

A far more traditional game is, of course, conkers, known to all little English boys (no matter where in the world they go, especially if they never really grew up!). The horse-chestnut tree in Church Lane has been the local source of supply for many a long year. For the uninitiated, a horse-chestnut (the conker) was threaded on to a short piece of string and swung against an opponent’s …but that’s another story. In the 1930s, the pub yard was the venue for the ancient game of quoits, played at Yapton as in most other villages of Sussex.conker to try and break it. In 1980, Yapton’s Parish Council found itself embroiled in an argument over who actually owned the conker rights’to the said tree. Ah, the joys of the simple life!

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