Rule and Compasses

The only known reference to the Rule and Compasses comes in a sale catalogue for the Dunstable Brewery and its licensed houses dated 1843 [reference BH409]. This describes the Rule and Compasses as having a tap room, a parlour, a bar, a large club room, a dairy, a kitchen, an underground cellar, and four bedrooms; outside were a yard with a well, a small piece of ground behind the club room and half of a detached stable for two horses. The premises were leasehold, with an 800 year lease from 1675. In 1843 the occupier for Barnard Childs. 

It seems very unlikely that a public house of this size and age would merit only a single mention in the archives. The coat of arms of the Carpenters’ Company is a chevron (the shape of a carpenter’s rule) and compasses, so the most probable explanation is that the Rule and Compasses was in fact the Carpenters Arms.