Wandering the streets of Birmingham today, this magnificent pub building caught my eye. Then the name – The Old Contemptibles – made me smile.
We British have long used pub names to tell the story of our social history, quietly preserving things that matter. Sometimes confusingly so, until you dig a little.
I often stop in Ripley, Surrey – a landlocked village – where three of the pubs have distinctly nautical names: The Ship, The Anchor and The Jovial Sailor. Odd, until you realise Ripley sits on the old London–Portsmouth road, once well travelled by Royal Navy officers and sailors moving between the Admiralty in London and their ships.
In today’s case, The Old Contemptibles refers to the derogatory name given by Kaiser Wilhelm to the British Expeditionary Force in 1914.. a label the men themselves were only too happy to adopt as a badge of honour.
A badge long-since preserved in Edmund Street, Birmingham. Lovely.
Andrew Greenhalgh 