The Engine and Tender Public House, Ampthill
The Engine & Tender Public House: Dunstable Street, Ampthill [formerly Live & Let Live]
The site of this Greene King beerhouse is first mentioned in any document held by Bedfordshire Archives in 1811 (proved in 1812) when Mary Willis of Hackney [Middlesex] devised her land in Ampthill in her will to her daughter Mary, who then had it as part of her settlement of 1822 when she married James Barstow. In 1849 the Barstows sold the property to Edward Coleman of Ampthill, butcher when it was described as a close of arable in part of the former Warren measuring 1 acre, 3 roods and 14 poles abutting north-west on the road to Flitwick. In 1850 Coleman sold part of the land measuring 89 feet by 79 feet 6 inches and containing 12.25 poles to Abraham Millard, carpenter.
Clearly at this date the beerhouse was not yet built but in 1851 when Millard mortgaged the land to Edward Handscomb it is described as containing two cottages, a carpenter’s shop and other buildings. It is possible that one of the cottages or one of the other buildings was used as a beerhouse. Another possibility is that the carpenter’s shop became a beerhouse on the death of Abraham Millard (see below) but none of this can be verified as neither the name Millard nor Bon(n)ess (later the beerhouse keeper, see below) is mentioned in any Directories before 1869.
By 1854 Abraham Millard was dead and at some point his widow Margaret married Edward Boness or Bonness who was her husband in 1868 when the mortgage was assigned to brewer Edward Nash of Baldock [Hertfordshire] suggesting that the premises was a beerhouse by that date. The beerhouse continues not to be named in any deed until 1889 although it is known to have existed from 1860 when Edward Bon(n)ess is named as beer seller in a Directory. In 1889 the beerhouse was leased for 25 years by new mortgages Margaret Steed, widow of Oliver Steed of Baldock, brewer and Oliver’s executors together with Bon(n)ess as landlord to William Pickering, who had bought Steed’s brewery in Baldock. This lease was assigned to Pickering’s Baldock Brewery Company in 1898. Six years later the lease was assigned to Wells & Winch, to whom Edward Bon(n)ess sold the freehold in 1914. Wells & Winch became Greene King in 1963, meanwhile on 2 Mar 1950 the premises had become a fully licensed public house.
List of Licensees: note that this is not a complete list. Italics indicate licensees whose beginning and/or end dates are not known:
- 1869-1894: Edward Boness
- before 1894: Margaret Bonness
- 1894-1895: Edward Walter Heselden
- 1895-1898: James Rudkin
- 1898: Thomas Berry
- 1898: Henry Allen Burgoyne
- 1898-1907: Edward Gillham
- 1907-1908: Edwin Browning
- 1908-1910: John William Tott
- 1910: John Herbert Bradshaw
- 1910: Arthur Dunkley
- 1910-1913: George Steed
- 1913-1914: Frederick Payne
- 1914-1916: John William Tott
- 1916-1918: Frank Charles Heal
- 1918-1943: Arthur Charles Gardner
- 1943-1951: William Richardson
- 1951-1955: Ida Florence May Richardson
- 1955-1957: Arthur Edward White
- 1957: Arthur Cammack
List of sources at Bedfordshire Archives:
- GK281/1: Abstract of title of Edward Handscomb: 1812-1850
- GK281/19: Abstract of title: 1850
- GK281/6a: Mortgage by Abraham Millard: 1851
- GK281/18: Abstract of title of Wells & Winch: 1851 - 1914
- GK165/12: Conveyance from William and William Joseph Pickering to Baldock Brewery: 1898 noting conveyance from Edward Bonness in 1889
- GK281/15: Lease from Edward Boness to William Pickering: 1889
- GK1/36: Sale catalogue of Baldock Brewery: 1898-1903
- GK165/12: Conveyance to Baldock Brewery: 1898
- GK281/16: Transfer of mortgage: 1900
- GK165/17: Assignment of leasehold from Baldock Brewery to Wells & Winch: 1904
- UDA14/33: Proposed alterations to drainage: 1912
- GK281/17: Transfer of mortgage: 1914
- Z1039/34/1: Sale by Edward Bonness to Wells & Winch: 1914
- Z1105/1: Liquor Licence Traders Survey Form: 1961
- X777/8 no.5: Photograph: c.1988