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Date of photo: 2014	Picture source: Movement80
The Bell was situated at 80 Marsworth Road. This pub closed in 2014.
My great grandfather James Archer took over as licensee in 1916, it would have been some time towards the end of the First World War. My grandmother told me that the family lived in the pub and that normally she wouldn’t have been allowed to go downstairs when the pub was open. (She was an only child). However on one occasion she did go downstairs when a large body of British soldiers were in the pub, having a right old Mafeking before shipping out to France. At some stage somebody poured beer into the working parts of an old upright piano which stood in the bar, which probably didn’t do it a great deal of good! My great-grandmother apparently went ballistic at what she viewed as the ill-discipline of the soldiers. The matter was only resolved when an officer asked her what the cost of the damage was, and upon being told he wrote a cheque there and then either for the cost of the repair or for a new piano. Considering what those poor guys were going to have to face during the following weeks and months in France, I don’t think they could be blamed for acting up a bit on possibly what was their last night in Blighty!
Martin Heyes (September 2020)
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