Unofficial Christ's Hospital Forum

As a person who didn't live near Horsham, it wasn't till years after leaving school that I had the chance to visit pubs near CH which were seen as Masters' pubs in my day.

The Fox & Hounds/Boar's Head was very much my sort of place (well, the public bar was, anyway): I particularly liked the stone floors. The Hen & Chickens at Southwater was a place I'd visited as a pupil and of which I didn't form much of an opinion (no change there). The Green Dragon at Dragon's Green had too low a ceiling for me and I whacked my head a real treat on the low beams. The Ship (?) at The Haven was staggeringly primitive and tiny and the garden was full of stomach-churningly plummily-voiced horsey types. But the one that astonished me most was the Bax Castle.

In my day, it famously had a 'manic depressive' landlord who ultimately committed suicide by hanging himself in the bar (as we were told). This had always stuck in my mind - so imagine my consternation upon entering the boozer and finding that it had such a ridiculously low ceiling that the landlord would've had to be a dwarf to have been able to hang himself from it. Or was he a dwarf - and is that why he was so depressed that he killed himself?

The Green Dragon, was that the pub that had an albino buried in the front garden? It was just possible to get there on a Wed afternoon in time for a couple of very swift pints after lunch which I did on several occasions in the company of Mike Barram (Col A 56-63?) in the summer term of 1963. It was just far enough away from CH to pretty much guarantee that no masters would be there.

The Bax Castle was always a no-no, reputed to be the regular of Fal Matthews, housemaster of Pe B.

The Green Dragon does indeed have an albino in the back garden...

The Bax is still a favourite haunt of the staff...

Great Plum wrote:The Green Dragon does indeed have an albino in the back garden...

The Bax is still a favourite haunt of the staff...

Any chance you could arrange for some of the staff to have a quiet word in the landlord's ear?

His attitude towards the irritating ******** who insist on ruining his day (customers) seems to be earning him a bit of a reputation.See the reviews here http://www.horshampub.co.uk/baxcastle.html

I was a good boy, I was, and I never sneaked off to the boozer when I was at school (er...except for three times). One time was when I nicked off to that Hen & Chickens joint in Southwater, well camouflaged as a civilian but nevertheless dreading meeting a master or two, and was amazed to discover a broad assortment of Housey boys sitting around in the bar, actually wearing Housey coats. I mean, flamin' 'eck, the school had officially asked all the landlords for miles around not to serve CH pupils, so I was not a little astonished. (Some of the drink-sodden schoolboys were school monitors, cigs burning away in their hypocritical claws. I was singularly unimpressed.)

Maybe Richard 'Rubber Duck' Ruck knows the answer to this one. Have all the pubs changed their names to Iggy's Bar, Ziggy's Bar, Trumper's, Thumper's, The Frog & Radish etc., etc. since our day? Is the Fox & Hounds now called the Fox & Firkin? And has anyone opened a boozer called The Penguin-Basher yet?

And is that cottage up the road on Tower Hill still haunted, along with the road outside?

Questions, questions....

A Dirty Old Jack wrote: Maybe Richard 'Rubber Duck' Ruck knows the answer to this one.

Hmmm, a typically 'inventive' junior house nickname from 1972/1973. Well-remembered, or reinvented? Only you can tell us........

Questions, questions, eh?

You were known as 'Rubber Fcuk' by the time I woke up to your existence, but I was told you were formerly known as 'Rubber Duck' - which was a pleasantly non-obvious nickname I thought. I've met several people named Ruck since leaving school and they were all called 'Fcuk' at school, which has a certain dismal inevitability about it, wouldn't you say?

So tell us, Mr Rubber Duck: Did various Ch-area boozers change their names to Nobby's, Swiggers', The Sneak Inn etc. since our time?

A Dirty Old Jack wrote:You were known as 'Rubber Fcuk' by the time I woke up to your existence, but I was told you were formerly known as 'Rubber Duck' - which was a pleasantly non-obvious nickname I thought. I've met several people named Ruck since leaving school and they were all called 'Fcuk' at school, which has a certain dismal inevitability about it, wouldn't you say?

So tell us, Mr Rubber Duck: Did various Ch-area boozers change their names to Nobby's, Swiggers', The Sneak Inn etc. since our time?

OK, this is one of the perils of not hiding behind a mask of anonymity on a public forum, I suppose.

Question 1 - The answer is 'yes'. Thankfully my adult mates have always been a bit more inventive (though not much more....).

Question 2 - The answer is 'no'. Only newly built / converted pubs around here tend to have these crap names.

For example, Southwater still has The Hen and Chicken and, to raise a schoolboy snigger, The Cock Inn.

Interested (mildly) to know that you've met several people named Ruck - the surname's a bit unusual. I've never met anyone with the name outside my immediate family, although I am aware of a few others.

And now, with dismal inevitability, I have to go to the Post Office.

Richard Ruck wrote:

A Dirty Old Jack wrote:You were known as 'Rubber Fcuk' by the time I woke up to your existence, but I was told you were formerly known as 'Rubber Duck' - which was a pleasantly non-obvious nickname I thought. I've met several people named Ruck since leaving school and they were all called 'Fcuk' at school, which has a certain dismal inevitability about it, wouldn't you say?

So tell us, Mr Rubber Duck: Did various Ch-area boozers change their names to Nobby's, Swiggers', The Sneak Inn etc. since our time?

OK, this is one of the perils of not hiding behind a mask of anonymity on a public forum, I suppose.

Question 1 - The answer is 'yes'. Thankfully my adult mates have always been a bit more inventive (though not much more....).

Question 2 - The answer is 'no'. Only newly built / converted pubs around here tend to have these crap names.

For example, Southwater still has The Hen and Chicken and, to raise a schoolboy snigger, The Cock Inn.

Interested (mildly) to know that you've met several people named Ruck - the surname's a bit unusual. I've never met anyone with the name outside my immediate family, although I am aware of a few others.

And now, with dismal inevitability, I have to go to the Post Office.

Doesn't pension day come round so quickly as you age, Richard ?

Didn't Rubber-Duck have some sort of CB radio meaning ?

Richard Ruck wrote:Interested (mildly) to know that you've met several people named Ruck - the surname's a bit unusual. I've never met anyone with the name outside my immediate family, although I am aware of a few others.

All 3 of the Rucks I've met had body-mass problems: one was well chubby and the other two were clinically obese.

Should I picture you these days as an enormous roly-poly dollop?

Sort of like http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v629/ ... r/otis.bmp ?

Nice picture!

Well, I have gained a few pounds as a result of giving up smoking, but I'd have to go on a severe fast-food diet before I'd start to look like that bloke.

Umm....Actually, I look a bit like that bloke in the photo these days, I'm embarrassed to say. Too many kebabs, possibly (or perhaps not enough). And to think I was an ultra-skinny Jack Frostlike teenager at CH.....Nobody would have guessed I'd grow up to be a giant barrage balloon with hair on top.

(Maybe one of the reasons I've never been back is that I don't want people hooting with laughter at me and comparing their wives' cup-sizes with mine.)