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Picture source: Sue McArdle
The Four Horseshoes was situated at 177 Basingstoke Road. This pub was built on the site of an earlier Four Horseshoes which was also known as The Long Pull in the 19th century.
Source: Bob Brodie
This pub has been through a couple of incarnations as restaurants, latterly known as The Eastern Pearl.
Paul Irving (July 2011)
Now demolished to make way for student accommodation.
Admin (November 2016)
I was sad to see the "The Shoes" had been demolished. For many years the Four Horseshoes was run by the Ransom family, who were good friends of ours. After Emma died in 1948 and Herbert George died in 1951 their son Victor and his wife Beryl took over. Visiting the family in the 40s and early 50s (aged 7-12) included such pleasures as walking down stone steps into the cool cellar, being pushed along by Mabel (don't know her family name) in a big basket on casters used for collecting bottle tops and other oddments, sneaking into the bar and drawing beer onto my left palm and slurping it up, the strange arrangement of the living quarters upstairs looking up onto a lead roof and the huge prewar Frigidaire in the kitchen. Old Mr and Mrs Ransom and their son George and daughter Nancy, who were my parents' generation but did not marry until the 1960s, were always very kind to us youngsters and had a wonderful way of keeping us entertained and making us feel at home. After Vic died in 1961 I imagine the pub must have changed hands, but our close friendship with the family lasted until Nancy's death in her early 90s in 2001 or 2002. Nancy left me a painting of the old pub, done by E. Spencer in 1895 and later reframed by Picture Crafts, 103 London Street, Reading. Outside the building, which looks 17th-century, stand a couple of horse and a horse-and-trap. She told me that before Simonds took it over it had belonged to Adams's brewery. Odd what tricks the memory plays: I keep getting a whiff of spilt beer drying on the bar counter.
Ian Thompson (September 2018)
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Other Photos
Original Four Horseshoes, c1895	Picture source: Hania Franek
Original Four Horseshoes	Picture source: Raymond Simonds
	Picture source: Quinten Taylor