Raglan House, Flints Green
| There were in the 18th century a number of roads connecting the hamlets of Eastern Green, Upper Green (Upper Eastern Green), Pickford Gate, Flints Green, Hockley (Okley) and others. The road from Flints Green to Church Farm in Upper Eastern Green was called Flints Lane. Thomas Keatley lived in a house on Flints Lane, numbered 44 Flints Green. In the 1841 census he was called a 'coal dealer'. In 1851 he was a 'milkman'. But in 1861 he is a 'beer house keeper', aged 57, with a wife, Caroline, aged 55 and a son, Charles Keatley, who is a blacksmith aged 22. This was the Raglan House. I cannot explain why a new beerhouse should appear in 1861, 30 years after the passing of the Beerhouse Act. Perhaps it went unrecorded in previous years as not being the main source of income of the household.
What can be said is that it appears in the 1863 Post Office Directory and 1866 Morris's Directory but not in the 1874 White's Directory nor in subsequent ones. In the 1871 Census, Thomas Keatley is described as a 'small landowner'. Thus the Raglan House appears to have had a short life of c1861- c1871.
Flints Lane is said to have been on a coaching route into Coventry and it has been suggested that it may have been a stop for coaches. But it is difficult to see how a mere beerhouse could have the facilities to cater for coaching trade. It is more likely that local carters used it, picking up passengers as well as loads here. A better indication of its trade is in the suggestion that it was closed down because poachers used to sell their ill-gotten wares there. By the 1860s, beer houses had passed under the control of the magistrates who were reducing their numbers at a pace. Any suggestion of malpractice would be sufficient to withdraw its license.
Interestingly, by the 1905 1:2500 Ordnance Survey Map, which was surveyed in 1887 and revised 1902-3, most of the lanes in this area, including Flints Lane, had become footpaths. Did this have any bearing on the closure of the Raglan House? I have no idea what the Raglan House looked like. On a 1905 map, the building is long and narrow and bordered directly on to Flints Lane but this was many years after the beer house closed. The Raglan House was known locally as the RAG AND LOUSE. Fitzroy James Henry Somerset, 1st Baron Raglan (1788 - 1855) was a British General who served in the Peninsular War and was military secretary to the Duke of Wellington. He was Commander- in- Chief of the British troops in the Crimea in 1854 but was thought by many to be rather ineffective in that role. | |||
LICENSEES:1861 - 1868 Thomas Keatley |
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