This could be the Regal & Shires
Simon Brown was rather taken by the play on words that has produced the sign on the Coach & Horses pub in the Essex village of Thorley.
No stagecoach attached to a pair of working fast steeds at this McMullen hostelry near Bishops Stortford, but a proper diesel coach in the meaning of the Act passing three equally fine horses in a field.
And better still, not just someone’s half remembered idea of a coach, but a real one that survives in active preservation.
JTB 749 is an AEC Regal III with Blackpool-built Burlingham body that was new to Florence of Morecambe in 1948 and is part of the Cumbria Classic Coaches fleet today. Just to prove the point and confirm what an excellent job the pub sign artist has done in capturing the lines of the original, here is Phil Halewood’s picture of JTB at work at the Cumbria Easter Rally in Kirkby Stephen.
Leyland brewery raises a cheer for its heritage
He may not find it on sale in that pub in Thorley, but if Simon Brown ventured a couple of hundred miles north he would recognise some names on the products of the Crankshaft Brewery in the Lancashire town of Leyland. Steven Wainwright has and, for what it’s worth, tells me that they taste very good indeed.
