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The Bird In Hand was situated on Kings Hill. This pub closed in 1966. My grandmother, May Summerell, was the licensee for many years until the pub closed. Several members of the family as children were terrified of a wooden chest that lived at the end of a long corridor upstairs. My grandmother (born 1900) told a story that when she first moved there, (certainly pre-1939) and I think some time in the 1920s, several times she and her husband Roy William Alfred Summerell (who was NOT the licensee when it closed, she was) were woken in the middle of the night by the sound of the bar being full of people singing and drinking. On investigation, all of the sounds would immediately cease when the bar door was opened. This happened so many times that she eventually wrote to the previous licensee and got a written reply saying that the pub had always been a very respectable establishment! There was also a forge on the site, for general blacksmith work but not a farriers - my grandfather made bicycles for several of his 8 children.

Source: Carl Bennett

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