Bradwell's Cricketers pub was a hit with wartime aircrews

After all, it is a place that has a fantastic history, that extends from the Roman shore fort of Othona, right through to the age of the nuclear power station, and with much more in between.

I tried to capture something of its character in my Short History of Bradwell-on-Sea (published 1986). I wrote most of that book in the convivial surroundings of the bar of the Green Man.

As a result, I was keen to include a chapter about Bradwell’s pubs. I knew three of them well – the Green Man (obviously), the now closed Queen’s Head, aka the Blackwater Inn (where I played pool with friends on a Friday night), and the pre-fire days of the King’s Head (where we had a meal after I proposed to my wife in St Peter’s Chapel).

However, I had spent very little time in the Cricketers. I had heard stories about it being the haunt of aircrew during the war, but apart from that knew next to nothing about it.

Having a rare, free day together (and for old time’s sake) my wife and I had a drive out to Bradwell and I suggested we tried the Cricketers for a drink and a snack.

We pulled on to the front car park and, not being locals, with some trepidation we went inside.

We were immediately made welcome by the landlord and had a good conversation with him about the pub’s wartime history – how the ceiling was once covered in RAF signatures (sadly no longer) and that the post to the pub sign is fixed into an old landing light.

Nowadays the pub has a great reputation for its Sunday lunches and I can certainly vouch that they keep a good pint there.

Looking through my notes, an ex-418 Squadron pilot that I interviewed in the 1970s told me that “Mrs Cottage’s pub was favoured by the majority of the aircrew”.

That would have been Edith Mary Cottage (née Bennett), born in 1893 and married (in 1914) to William Cottage.

A former (until 1929) Metropolitan Police sergeant, William Frank Cottage (born 1886) is listed in Kelly’s Trade Directory of 1937 as the landlord, and both William and Edith are recorded as running the pub in the 1939 England and Wales Register.

WF Cottage also appears in the telephone directories from 1935 through to 1946 (the pub’s number was Bradwell-on-Sea 36 and then 236).

William passed away in 1946, leaving effects of £128 8s 9d to Edith and the following year she re-married and only died in 1977.

So we can say with some certainty that the Cottages ran the Cricketers from at least 1935 to 1946, but can we get back any earlier in the pub’s story.

Ian Peaty, in his Essex Brewers (1992), has the Cricketers listed as one of the pubs purchased in 1934 by Taylor Walker and Company of London from the Chelmsford brewer, Wells and Perry Ltd.

Preserved in the Essex Record Office is a plan for the “re-building of inn and stabling, Cricketers Inn, Bradwell-juxta-Mare”.

Wells and Perry Ltd are given as the owners, R Mawhood the architect, and the plan is dated 1909. At that stage, Hewitt Walter Collins would have been the landlord.

Although that “re-building” occurred in 1909, there was clearly something on the site before then.

Bradwell historian Kevin Bruce has made an extensive study of the deeds back to 1741 and a property known as Ricketts Hall, variously described as divided into two, three and then four tenements.

It is probably one of those tenements that the 1901 census lists as Glebe Cottage, which is annotated 'Cricketers Arms', with Hewitt W Collins, wife Elizabeth and lodger Robert Southgate in residence.

I can find no reference to the Cricketers earlier than that, although there was a Saracens Head along the East End Road in 1881 (beer house-keeper William Lone).

So what at first sight appears to be a relatively 'modern' pub, was re-built in 1909 and has a heritage (including of beer) that dates back to at least 1901 and possibly even further.

But there is a lot more to the Cricketers than just that chronology. After all, pubs are places of human activity, of loves and loss, of the rhythm of generations, of convivial exchanges.

Sometimes pubs are even seen as a sanctuary and there is, I am told, still beneath the car park, the remains of a nuclear bunker.

In that respect the Cricketers mirrors the story of the village – a tale that starts somewhere in the distant past and extends into modern times.

The Cricketers really is an “Inn of History” that is thankfully still open for us to experience in the time-honoured way.