Bear Cross - The Bear Cross Pub

The Bear Cross Pub

The Bear Cross pub was put up in 1931-2, replacing a previous hostelry which had variously been known as 'The Bear Cross Inn’ or ‘The Brickmaker’s Arms’. The first licensee of this earlier hostelry, George Ware, worked as a brickmaker by day, as did most local inhabitants, as the ferruginous clays of the area had given rise to a flourishing brickmaking industry by the mid-nineteenth century. On Ware’s death in 1883 the inn's licence passed to the Lane family, among them Frank Lane, who worked as a carpenter by day and built coffins for the Gypsy community on nearby Alderney Common. His son Arthur Lane was born above The Bear Cross Inn in 1913, and could recall Augustus John – who lived at Alderney Manor between 1911 and 1927 - spending ‘rumbustious’ evenings on the premises, and at The Shoulder of Mutton in West Howe.