Guest
Guest
 | | Subject: Highwayman Inn Devon Tue Feb 10, 2009 11:34 am | |
| Our Next Night is going to be around the Highwayman Inn, but we will be more aorund the church of St Thomas Becket which is opposite, this church was built by freemasons so for me its where to start. In 1959 the dilapidated property came into the possession of John Buster Jones, a Welsh visionary whose previous achievements had included running away to sea when he was 14, and representing Wales at boxing and distance running. He and his wife, Rita, changed the pub's name to The Highwayman, and set about transforming the modest roadside watering hole into one of the most unusual and imaginatively furnished hostelries in the whole of England.
About the Inn: (credit: http://www.haunted-britain.com/highwayman.htm)What Buster Jones created was a fairy-tale cottage cum Aladdin's cave, with nautical and ecclesiastical themes thrown in for good measure. He dragged tree stumps from nearby woodland and fashioned them into bar tops, or used them as massive beams to prop up ageing ceilings. The old Okehampton-to-Launceston stagecoach formed a suitably eccentric entrance lobby. Old spindles, battered tankards, cartwheels, lanterns and all manner of other bric-a-brac came to occupy every spare inch of wall, beam or ceiling. Timbers and fittings from old ships, including the intricately carved door of the whaler Diana that ran aground in the Humber in 1869 were used to create the remarkable Galleon Bar, which has the below-decks ambience of an 18th-century pirate ship. Buster's daughter, Sally, and her husband Bruce, who take great care to ensure that his legacy remains intact, now run the inn. They have long grown used to sharing their bequest with one or two spirits of an ethereal nature who drop in every so often to keep an eye on the comings and goings. |
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