The Green Man & Black's Head Royal Hotel (sometimes simply the Green Man) is a public house and hotel on St John Street (the A515) in the town centre [1] [2] of Ashbourne, Derbyshire. The premises is known for its Grade II* listed entrance sign and its association with Royal Shrovetide Football.
There has been a pub in this location since the 1750s. James Boswell wrote that he stopped there to eat in 1777 (terming it "a very good inn" and its proprietress "a mighty civil gentlewoman") [3] and Princess Victoria visited in the 1830s. [1]
The pub closed in 2012 following a period of decline. [4] [5] The owner worked with local architects, conservation group Brownhill Hayward Brown, Derbyshire County Council and Historic England to produce a suitable refurbishment plan that would be a sustainable business model while still preserving the building's historic character. [4] It reopened to customers in 2018. [5] [6] It has since been praised for helping to revitalise the town's economy. [7]
The sign over the road adjacent to the pub was constructed in 1825 when the Green Man and Blackmoor Inn were joined together. [8] There are two pictures on either side of the sign depicting a man dressed in green tweeds and wearing a green hat. On one side, the man is carrying a gun; on the other he is shooting wildfowl. [9] The sign was Grade II listed in 1951, and updated to Grade II* in 1974. [10]
The gallows-type sign is mentioned in the Guinness World Records as being the longest inn sign in the world. [10] [11] [12] It was damaged by a lorry strike in 2006, but subsequently repaired. [13]
The sign features an effigy of a black man's head. In June 2020, during the George Floyd protests in the United Kingdom, a 28,000-signature petition called for it to be taken down, describing it at "disgusting racist imagery". Derbyshire Dales District Council said it would remove the head as soon as possible, but locals removed it the same day, saying they had done so to protect it from vandalism, adding it would be restored with "a lick of black paint" and reinstalled at a later date. [14] [15] [16] The Council, however, decided against replacing the controversial head, and its future currently remains undecided. [17]
The Green Man is well known locally for being a focal point of the annual Royal Shrovetide Football match. [4] [18] A roll of honour, listing throwers and scorers since the late 19th century, is displayed inside the hotel. [19]
The pub sign has also been used as the finishing line for a soap box race in the town. [20]
Derbyshire is a ceremonial and non-metropolitan county in the East Midlands, England. The county is the westernmost in the East Midlands. It covers much of the Peak District National Park, the southern end of the Pennine range of hills and part of the National Forest. It is bordered by Greater Manchester to the north-west, West Yorkshire to the north, South Yorkshire to the north-east, Nottinghamshire to the east, Leicestershire to the south-east, Staffordshire to the west and south-west, and Cheshire to the west. The county’s largest settlement and only city, Derby, is now administered as a unitary authority. The rest of Derbyshire remains in the Derbyshire County Council local authority area.
Matlock is the county town of Derbyshire, England. It is in the south-eastern part of the Peak District, with the National Park directly to the west. The town is twinned with the French town of Eaubonne. The former spa resort of Matlock Bath lies immediately south of the town on the A6. The civil parish of Matlock Town had a population in the 2011 UK census of 9,543.
Ashbourne is a market town in the Derbyshire Dales district in Derbyshire, England. Its population was measured at 8,377 in the 2011 census and was estimated to have grown to 9,163 by 2019. It has many historical buildings and independent shops. The town offers a historic annual Shrovetide football match. Its position near the southern edge of the Peak District makes it the closest town to Dovedale, to which Ashbourne is sometimes referred to as the gateway.
The Royal Shrovetide Football Match is a "medieval football" game played annually on Shrove Tuesday and Ash Wednesday in the town of Ashbourne in Derbyshire, England. Shrovetide ball games have been played in England since at least the 12th century from the reign of Henry II (1154–89). The Ashbourne game also known as "hugball" has been played from at least c.1667 although the exact origins of the game are unknown due to a fire at the Royal Shrovetide Committee office in the 1890s which destroyed the earliest records. One of the most popular origin theories suggests the macabre notion that the 'ball' was originally a severed head tossed into the waiting crowd following an execution. Although this may have happened, it is more likely that games such as the Winchelsea Streete Game, reputedly played during the Hundred Years' War with France, were adaptations of an original ball game intended to show contempt for the enemy.
The A52 is a major road in the East Midlands, England. It runs east from a junction with the A53 at Newcastle-under-Lyme near Stoke-on-Trent via Ashbourne, Derby, Stapleford, Nottingham, West Bridgford, Bingham, Grantham, Boston and Skegness to the east Lincolnshire coast at Mablethorpe. It is approximately 147 miles (237 km) long.
Allestree is a suburb and ward of the city of Derby, a unitary authority area, in Derbyshire, England. It is the northernmost ward and is on the A6 road, about 2 miles (3 km) north of Derby city centre. It is bordered by the district of Amber Valley along its western and northern edges and Erewash in its north-east corner. To the south it borders the ward of Mackworth and to the east the ward of Darley Abbey.
Pub names are used to identify and differentiate traditional drinking establishments. Many pubs are centuries old, and were named at a time when most of their customers were illiterate, but could recognise pub signs. The use of signage was not confined to drinking establishments. British pubs may be named after and depict anything from everyday objects, to sovereigns, aristocrats and landowners. Other names come from historic events, livery companies, occupations, sports, and craftsmen's guilds. One of the most common pub names is the Red Lion.
St Oswald's Church is a Church of England parish church located in Ashbourne, in the county of Derbyshire, England.
Brailsford is a small red-brick village and civil parish in Derbyshire on the A52 midway between Derby and Ashbourne. The parish also includes Brailsford Green. The civil parish population at the 2011 Census was 1,118. The village has a pub, a golf club, a post office and a school. There are many fine houses in the district including two 20th-century country houses: Brailsford Hall built in 1905 in Jacobean style, and Culland Hall.
Derby is a city and unitary authority area in Derbyshire, England, on the River Derwent in south Derbyshire, which is part of the East Midlands. It was traditionally the county town of Derbyshire. The population was 261,400 in 2021.
Mapleton, sometimes spelt Mappleton, is a village and a civil parish in the Derbyshire Dales District, in the English county of Derbyshire. It is near the River Dove and the town of Ashbourne. Mapleton has a post office, a pub called the Okeover Arms and a church. In 2011, according to census data, the Parish had a population of 147 people. There is an annual event in which people jump off of the Mapleton Bridge to raise money for charity.
The Henmore Brook or the River Henmore is a tributary of the River Dove in Derbyshire, England, and is 20 km in length.
The Malt Shovel is a Grade II listed public house at Potter Street, Spondon, Derby. The pub is known for its unmodernised period interiors and internal design.
Callow Hall Hotel is a house of historical significance in Derbyshire, England. It lies 0.5 mile west of the town of Ashbourne, within the civil parish of Mapleton. It was built from 1849 to 1852 by H. J. Stevens for John Goodwin Johnson, a local magistrate. It was a private residence for over a century and then became a hotel in 1982. It is still a hotel which provides accommodation and restaurant services and caters for special events particularly weddings.
St Peter’s Church, Parwich is a Grade II* listed parish church in the Church of England in Parwich, Derbyshire.
The Atherstone Ball Game is a "medieval football" game played annually on Shrove Tuesday in the English town of Atherstone, Warwickshire. The game honours a match played between Leicestershire and Warwickshire in 1199, when teams used a bag of gold as a ball, and which was won by Warwickshire. At one time similar events were held in many towns throughout England, but Atherstone's is now one of at last three such games that are still played each year at Shrovetide, the others being the Royal Shrovetide Football match held in Ashbourne, Derbyshire, and The Alnwick Shrovetide Football Match in Alnwick, Northumberland.
Sarah Elizabeth Dines is a British Conservative Party politician. She has been Member of Parliament (MP) for Derbyshire Dales since the 2019 general election. She has been serving Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Safeguarding since October 2022. She served as Lord Commissioner of the Treasury from September to October 2022.
A number of statues and memorials have been the subject of protests and petitions during the George Floyd protests in the United Kingdom in 2020.
Ashbourne Town Hall is a municipal building in the Market Place, Ashbourne, Derbyshire, England. The town hall, which is the meeting place of Ashbourne Town Council, is a Grade II listed building.
Public houses, popularly known as pubs, are a significant feature of the history and culture of the English seaside resort of Brighton. The earliest pubs trace their history back to the 16th and 17th centuries, when present-day Brighton was a fishing village. Several coaching inns were founded in the 18th century as transport improved and communications with other towns developed, and around the same time other pubs became established in the fashionable Old Steine area in Brighton's early years as a resort. Many new pubs, originally beerhouses, were established after an Act of Parliament in 1830 loosened restrictions; two of these "Beerhouse Act" pubs remain in business. In the following decade the opening of Brighton's railway station provided another major boost to the pub trade, and by the late 19th century there were nearly 800 licensed venues in the town. Numbers declined gradually—as late as 1958 there was said to be "one pub for every day of the year—and by the early 21st century around 300 pubs were still trading, with others having closed but surviving in alternative use.
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