Thirty or more years ago I once spent two evenings in this pub. The second visit was to confirm the sheer dismal horror of the first. Even after this length of time I shudder at the thought of the back room of the Eagle, as it then was, a place akin to a waiting room to Hell. Maybe my memory exaggerates the Dickensian squalor and the pallor and hopeless despairing looks of the two or three other silent drinkers but I think not. The years passed and the Eagle became the Tap and Spile (I still don't know what a spile is and don't know anyone who does) and then, by sheer laziness, the Tap. I never went back. Passing the place the other day I saw that instead of selling beer someone was trying to flog furniture, I hurried on by ....
No, I don't think your memory's exaggerating. It really was an utter cesspit back in those days. During the 1990s, as the Tap & Spile (as an ex-beery person I actually know what a spile is), it was transformed into a rather splendid boozer, at least for a few years; I don't know what happened after that.
ReplyDeleteI have a vague memory that the building is a lot older than it appears, but I couldn't swear to that.
Some ghosts never die.
ReplyDeleteI love your description. It does look like an old building.
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