The Green Man Public House Humbershoe

The site of The Green Man Public House January 2010

The Green Man Public House: 50 High Street, Markyate [also called The Sportsman]

The Green Man was built around 1836 as, at that date, the former Bell Inn, standing to the north, was conveyed by John Andrew Groome to Cornelius Goodyear [Z172/20] and the deed notes that Groome reserved to himself, and did not sell to Goodyear, "a piece of ground as then walled next the Sun Inn House" on which ground "a house called the Green Man public house has been erected".

Otherwise Bedfordshire and Luton Archives and Records Service only has references to the Green Man in directories and a licensing register [PSL6/1]. Hertfordshire Historic Environment Record [HER 12094] notes that the Green Man stood on the site of 50 High Street and that in the first edition Ordnance Survey map of 1879 it was marked as the Sportsman. The licence was refused, resulting in the closure of the public house, in December 1913.

Sources:

• Z172/20: Deed: 1836.
• PSL6/1: Register of Alehouse Licences - Luton Petty Sessional Division: 1872-1901.

List of Licensees: note that this is not a complete list. Italics indicate licensees whose beginning and/or end dates are not known. The list goes up to 1897 at which date Humbershoe became part of the new Hertfordshire civil parish of Markyate: 

1839: Samuel Biggs;
1847-1880: Edward Custance;
1880-1881: John Henry Hammond;
1881-1883: Frederick Hoar;
1883-1886: Charlotte Wells;
1886-1891: Daniel Abbott;
1891-1892: Ann Abbott;
1892-1893: Edwin Charles Short:[convicted on 13 Mar 1893 for selling, on 26th February 1893, a pint of beer to a drunken person - fined 2/6 with12/6 costs]
1893-1894: William How;
1894-1895: George Ambrose Sutton;
1895: William Becke;
1895-1896: Henry Bradsell;
1896: Sydney Forsythe and George Alfred Jones;
1896-1897: Henry Bradsell and Frederick George Welsh;
1897: John Baldwin.