Today the village sadly does not have a pub. But in the past there have been three different pubs. The Coopers Arms public house was recorded in 1778 and the Fox and Hounds was south of the green, open by 1851. It was badly damaged in a fire in the earlier part of the 20th century and completely rebuilt.The Three Horseshoes (at the end of Horseshoe Lane), built as a farmhouse in 17th century, was a pub from 1800, open in time for J R Withers to write these lines on it:
The weather-beaten signpost still is seen
No artist’s labour could the host afford,
But three hot horse-shoes branded in the board
Here met the village youths on pleasure bent,
And the long-hoarded halfpence freely spent:
The stalls were doors placed on a barrel’s head,
With cakes and sweets and penny whistles spread.
In the old kitchen by the chimney wide,
With foaming ale in good stone mugs supplied,
The old folks talk’d of times when they were young,
And the same songs, year after year, were sung:
“Lord Bateman”, “Spanking Jack” and “Black eyed Sue”,
“Will Watch”, “Crazy Jane”, and “Bonnets o’ Blue”.
From the 1860s the innkeepers were various generations of the Marsh family and after the change of hands in the Six Mile Bottom Estate Sale of 1912, Basil Bradnam was landlord in 1915.
Arthur Loates recalled: For the Horn Fair on the cricket field in May, horse-drawn caravans put up their stalls with Round-a-bouts, home-made rock, saucers of prawns and whelks, large brown fair biscuits and ornaments. On the last day the women called in at the Three Horseshoes for a bowl of tea, they’d play bowls and in the evening dancing would take place in the old barn to the concertina.
Arthur said that turning right from his garden gate at 52 The Green would bring him to the Fox and Hounds and turning left he could cross the road, climb a five-bar gate and follow a footpath to the Three Horseshoes.
In 1932, ownership of The Three Horseshoes changed again and it was bought by Hudson’s Brewery of Pampisford. It closed in 1957, leaving Weston Colville with just one pub, The Fox and Hounds which, in somewhat controversial circumstances as can be seen in one of the press cuttings, itself closed in 1985.
