Memories of the Globe Inn
Contributed by Brian Crowther of Kurrajong, Australia, grandson of former landlord Lloyd Crowther [2021]
The Globe Inn, June 2020
The landlord of the Globe Inn from 1960 to 1966 was Lloyd Crowther, who lived there with his second wife, Josey. The following information is extracted from material compiled as part of a family history.
Lloyd Crowther was born at Earby in Yorkshire in 1908 and educated at the Grammar School in Nelson, Lancashire. On leaving school he became an indentured apprentice stone mason and bricklayer. After marrying his first wife Elizabeth he moved south to Greenford in Middlesex and started his own building business. This was initially successful but the business was hit by the financial crisis of 1932 and was forced into liquidation. During the Second World War he worked as a general manager for a company building and installing air raid shelters and then on the runways at Northholt Aerodrome, while building a house for his family at Marlow, Buckinghamshire. After the war he again started a successful building business. He lived separately from his family and met Josey, later to become his second wife, in the late 1950s.
In 1960 Lloyd and Josey bought the Globe Inn at Linslade At this time “it was without electricity having its own rusty old generator in an old barn, and very primitive toilet facilities.”A talented seamstress, Josey created a lovely home in the upstairs living. In the mid-1960s Lloyd’s son and his family lived nearby and his daughter, her husband and young child lived in a mobile home at the back of The Globe. Both helped to run the pub. As the years went by they found the pub became too much work and decided to sell. After being away for many months they returned to the area to live in Stewkley, Buckinghamshire. In 1976 they returned to Lloyd’s home county of Yorkshire, moving to Horton in Ribblesdale where Josey ran a guesthouse.
Lloyd Crowther in vintage car outside the Globe Inn with his son Donald standing to the left, early 1960s [courtesy of Brian Crowther]
Brian Crowther remembers spending Christmas 1962 at the Globe when he was three years old …
“It was freezing, that epic cold winter (1962 to 1963) where snow lay on the ground for 6 weeks, I remember that too. We drove up to the pub, there was ice and lots of snow about.
I remember the fire place in the bar as huge (to a boy of 3 years 9 months), with those iron hangers to hang iron pots and a kettle on, for cooking. When I visited in Dec 1996 and again in 2008, I could see it is tiny. I was very small in 1962 so it appeared huge. My present was one of those tin toy clockwork train sets, working like a roller coaster.
Josey and Lloyd had two lovely boxer dogs, Hank and Amos, they used to roam around the fields pretty freely, Lloyd found it hard to keep them safe. One of them got killed on the main road. There were daffodils in the field opposite and the nearby woods, by the railway, were thick with blue bells in the spring. A beautiful memory. I remember the castle like entrance to the train tunnel on the boundary or Linslade Woods.
Josey did indeed make a lovely home. It was exceedingly comfortable and cosy. She and Grandad Lloyd made staying for little boys great. You felt really special, loved and spoilt. They were a very warm, lively and gregarious couple. For example, later when Lloyd and Josey were retired, they went back to the small village of Horton In Ribblesdale, a wild place in North West Yorkshire, near where Lloyd grew up at Hawes. They were frequent visitors to the pub there and Lloyd acted as the local Father Christmas. At the Globe Inn it was heaven for a small boy with easy access to the crisps and the 1960’s orange juice mixers in little glass bottles. I still remember the brand Babycham, a champagne, “would be if it could be”, drink. I didn’t drink any alcohol at all.
The pubs male toilets were primitive. I remember them still; they were disgusting, black painted concrete backing with a black painted trough and really smelly. They were out in the yard as a very small cramped block, in the winter very cold.While Mum and Dad were working around Watford I used to stay during some school holidays at The Globe Inn with Josey and Lloyd. I remember when we moved to Linslade Dad serving behind the bar. Mum used to help sometimes also.
When I was about 5 years old there two older boys playing with a wooden canoe on the canal. It leaked a lot and we in small boy fashion stopped the leak with wood filler. Not very successfully but we had a lot of fun doing it and paddling a canoe that would slowly fill with water. Grandad had a small motor boat, typical of the types you see on the canals (much like the one in the photo). We used to go out as a family on the canal in that sometimes.
In those days The Globe Inn, as you can see from the photos was very isolated. I remember some of the clientele. One was a small thin man in a dark grey or green coloured working man’s woollen suit and cloth cap and his dog, a whippet. He used to drink in the pub at lunchtime with his dog by his feet. Grandad used to sleep with a loaded shot gun under his bed in case of robbers. He never needed to use it in any way, other than for peace of mind, it as far as I know.
Grandad Lloyd said to my Dad that, “owning and running the pub was like printing money, he could just not help making money”, as it was so profitable. That is why in the 60s, he and Josey were able to sell up and unusually, due to cost in those days, tour Europe for about 6 months immediately after he sold it.”
Lloyd Crowther c.1985 [courtesy of Brian Crowther]
Brian also recalls his father’s memories of the Great Train Robbery of 8th August 1963 …
“On a night prior to The Great Train Robbery the gang, I presume Ronald Biggs included, met at The Globe Inn and Dad was helping run the pub that night. Dad says that he thought the robbers thought he could have tipped off the police. Dad’s hobby was flying small planes and says he flew over the areas the robbery took place and the hide out (about 30 miles away) around the period of the robbery (he did not say he saw it or anything like that), that the robbers may have got wind of that, so he was scared.
After most of the robbers were caught I remember dad taking me to the court at Linslade, to see them get sentenced/charged and be carted off in what Aussies call “paddy wagons”, police vehicles to take prisoners to jail. It was like a scene out of Z Cars or Softly Softly, or Dixon of Dock Green, 1960s black and white TV English cop TV shows, with navy blue Wolseley cars with little white lights with the letters “Wolseley” on the radiator. The day was like that, winter grey, cold, drizzly, it looked black and white in real life. Dad was making sure the robbers were safely put away, I guess. There was really only us as the crowd was few in number, as I remember.”
Brian also remembered …
“While living in Leighton Buzzard, (my primary school was Pulford’s Church School where I taught myself to swim with Mum in attendance in the freezing outdoor pool), I used to collect Esso, “Put a Tiger In Your Tank” tails, and bumper stickers. In a twist of fate as follows; I became a Senior Petroleum Geologist working for Esso, looking for oil and gas in Australia. One time flying back to the UK on holiday from my work in Esso Australia, to visit my family in the UK on a British Airways plane, I picked up the inflight magazine. Featured in it was The Globe Inn. How cool is that? Flying home to England from Australia, to see my grandfather’s pub, The Globe Inn, where I had happy memories as a small boy, in the flight magazine. Then to read it while flying home. The Globe Inn was very formative for me as a person. For my brother as well. He has always had boxer dogs as a result of his happy memories of The Globe, with Lloyd and Josey, Hank and Amos”