1. ORIGINS
The first proper records of people and properties started in 1841. Before that, in rural villages like Stansted, records were much more piecemeal and were often memories passed on from mouth to mouth or just generally accepted folklore.

An unnamed source from the Parish archive says that in the 18th century, the site of what is now the Black Horse pub was a dwelling named “Palmers” and was owned by Thomas Humphrey, who sold it to George Acost, husbandman [farmer] of Stansted. George Acost died in 1778 and left the property to his three sons, George, James and Henry. James died and left his share to his two brothers. George became a farmer in Swanscombe and sold his half share to his remaining brother, Henry, yeoman [small landowner/farmer] of Stansted. At this point, “Palmers was described as, ‘Barns, Stables, Edifices and Buildings, Gardens and Orchards, Yards, Backside Lands, Arable Meadows and Pasture’. There is no mention of ‘Palmers’ being a public house.

In 1791 Henry Acost sold ‘Palmers’ to Edward Hills, ‘a shopkeeper of Stansted’. When he died in 1801, he left ’Palmers’ to his son, John Goodwin Hills, for his lifetime and then to his grandson, John, forever. Both Johns were still alive in 1833 when Joseph Fremlin, Baker of Wateringbury, purchased the house. Between 1833 and 1847 (when it was sold to John Beale of Kent Brewery, Wateringbury it had been licensed as a public house and called the Black Horse.

The 1841 tithe record lists a different property in Tumblefield Road called The Old Black Horse, situated at the southern end of Wises Lane, where it meets Tumblefield Road (roughly where Stansted Lodge is currently situated). There is no proof that this was a pub, but it seems likely because of its name. It was still called The Old Black Horse in the 1851,1861, and 1871 censuses, but by 1881, the name had disappeared from the census record, and Stansted Lodge had appeared. The building that we now know as Stansted Lodge was built in 1810.

It is unknown who owned the Black Horse building in its earliest years, but from about 183,3 it was in its current location and was owned by the Fremlin family.

Author’s Comment
So what can we make of this? It is not entirely clear, but it seems probable that the ‘first’ Black Horse was situated at the top of Tumblefield Road. By 1841, this building was called the Old Black Horse. By then, the ‘second’ Black Horse had been established at the bottom of Tumblefield Road (where the current pub building is currently). This location had previously been a residential property called “Palmers, ” which the Humphreys, Acosts, and Hills families had successively owned. Palmers was not a pub in 1778, so any move of the ‘Black Horse’ name and function from the top of the road to the bottom would have occurred between 1778 and 1833.

2. OWNERSHIP
2.1 Joseph Fremlin (1833 – 1847)
The 1841 tithe assessment and the 1841 census both show that the owner of the Black Horse Public House (the building at the bottom of Tumblefield Road) was Joseph Fremlin. The archive record above shows that he had owned it from 1833 (or earlier). He was a baker in Wateringbury and was connected with the Fremlin family (later the Maidstone brewers), who licensed the house and changed its name from “Palmers” to the Black Horse.

Author’s Comment
Joseph Fremlin sold the pub to a brewery in about 1847, and he was the last private owner of the pub until 1992, when it returned to private ownership. The rest of this section is a complex web of brewery ownership that is difficult to follow. Section 3 contains details of the various publicans along the way and is, much more interesting.

2.2 Leney & Co (1847 – 1929)
The Leney family were associated with the Bull Inn at Wrotham, a posting house with a small brewhouse attached, and it is thought that the Leneys gained their brewing experience there. The Pontifex brothers, who owned a brewery in Wateringbury, would sometimes stop at The Bull on their way to Wateringbury from London, and this probably is how, in 1843, Charles Leney came to take a 21-year lease of the Pontifex’s brewery.
By 1847, Charles Leney and his brother, Augustus, had acquired the freehold of the Black Horse from the Fremlin family.

Author’s Comment
This doesn’t tally entirely with the record that John Beale of Kent Brewery bought the premises. Still, we do know that, at one stage, Kent Brewery(ies) was an umbrella holding company for three companies: Leney’s, Jude Hanbury and Mackeson).
Over the years, the Leney family company went on to buy the freehold of 155 more public houses. Frederick succeeded Augustus Leney. Frederick Leney collaborated very closely with his neighbours in Wateringbury, Messrs. Jude, Hanbury & Co Ltd.
In l861, Frederick Leney bought the freehold of the brewery from the Pontifex brothers and renamed it the Phoenix Brewery. Why the name of this fabled Egyptian bird was chosen is not known for sure, but it is considered probable that at some time earlier, the brewery burned down and, like the Phoenix, rose again from the ashes.

In 1895, a company known as Frederick Leney & Sons was formed to continue brewing at Wateringbury; the direct family connection with the brewery ended by the end of the First World War. In 1927, Whitbread & Co. purchased all the ordinary shares in Frederick Leney & Sons. This gave them ownership of 156 public houses, including the Black Horse. Whitbread transferred the shares to Jude Hanbury & Co. Ltd two years later, in 1929, in exchange for ordinary shares in the latter company.

2.3 Jude, Hanbury (1929 – 1934)
Jude, Hanbury became owners of the Black Horse in 1929 after the share dealing with Whitbread mentioned above.
This company was founded in 1810 in Wateringbury. By the late 1800s, Percy Jude was Jude, Hanbury, and Leney’s joint managing director. The two companies purchased a brewery in Yalding jointly and divided the licensed houses between them, reputedly by the principals cutting cards!
In 1929, the newly acquired pubs in the Leney & Co. part of Whitbread’s pub portfolio (including the Black Horse) were transferred to Jude, Hanbury and Co. in exchange for shares in Jude Hanbury. The existing managing director, Percy Jude, retired and went to live in Folkestone.
Jude, Hanbury also owned Mackeson’s brewery at Hythe, which they had taken over from Simonds Ltd of Reading in 1929. Whitbreads took control of Jude, Hanbury in the same year and, it seems, transferred the ownership of the Black Horse back to Leney’s.

2.4 Frederick Leney & Sons Ltd (1934 – 1961)
As part of what seems like a merry-go-round of corporate ownership changes, the ownership reverted to Leney’s. Meanwhile, at the Phoenix brewery, Whitbread began to design and make their famous Whitbread Inn signs, which are much sought after by collectors today. The beer brewed at Whitbreads, Wateringbury was mostly for export; among them were Whitbreads Light Ale, Gold Label Barley Wine and English Ale, once known as Fremlins Gold Top.
In 1981, it was decided to transfer the brewing to Faversham and the Phoenix brewery was finally closed in January 1982.
As an aside, the story of Richard Tapply of Wateringbury is a real rags-to-riches one. He started working as a pupil at Frederick Leney’s Phoenix Brewery in 1873 and graduated to become joint Managing Director of the company alongside Percy Jude. To mark his fifty years with the firm, a dinner was held at the King’s Head Hotel, Wateringbury in 1923, where he was presented with a silver salver and silver coffee service from the directors and many other gifts from employees and tenants.
This heralded the end of an era at the company because, by 1934, their ownership of many public houses had passed to Mackeson & Co. (another subsidiary of Whitbread). This was a ‘paper’ change of ownership as the Black Horse continued to trade as a Frederick Leney pub.

2.5 Fremlins Ltd (1961 – 1967)
In 1961, the 189 licensed outlets held by Mackeson (Whitbread) were sold to Fremlins of Maidstone. Whitbread retained the Phoenix Brewery.
Whitbread then bought Fremlins in 1967, along with their portfolio of 714 public houses. The day-to-day running of the Wateringbury brewery was then integrated with their Maidstone headquarters.

2.6 Whitbread (1967 – 1992)
Brewing continued at Wateringbury at the Phoenix Brewery until 1982, when the operation was moved to Faversham. The brewery buildings were demolished, and the site is now a housing estate. Whitbread continued as owners of the Black Horse until 1992, when the then tenants, Brian and Mary Keast, bought the freehold for £75,000. They had previously been paying an annual rent of £8,000 pa.

2.7 Private ownership (1992 – to date)
Since 1992, the freehold of the Black Horse has been held by successive owners/publicans, namely 1) Brian/Mary Keast, 2) Ian Duncan and Anne Roberts and 3) Victoria Collier and Danny Jarvis. Rick and Terry Marsh were tenants of Anne Roberts.

Author’s Comment
The history of these corporate manoeuvrings is so complex that the precise sequence of events is challenging to pin down. Different records give different details and dates for seemingly the same event. It is safe to say that the company of Samuel Whitbread appears somewhere in the ownership records for much of the pub’s history. An early example of keeping the taxman on his toes, possibly?

3. PUBLICANS
Two things happened in 1841 that provided us with verifiable records: the tithe assessment and the first-ever English census. Since then, it has been possible to identify the various publicans reliably.

3.1 John Goodwin Hills (1833? – 1847?)
At this time, the pub was owned by Joseph Fremlin, and the publican was John Hills, who also occupied 7 acres of land behind the pub (then called Chambers Dene and now called Clamberdene). This field was the home ground of Stansted Cricket Club until it moved to the Recreation Ground after 1939.

3.2 James Fremlin (1847? – 1858?)
By 1847, ownership had passed to John Beale of Kent Brewery, Wateringbury. In the same year, the publican was James Fremlin. James was also listed in 1851 as a 42-year-old farmer who lived at the pub with his wife Sarah (35) and their three daughters, Bertha, Rosa and Annie. There is a curious report in the West Kent Guardian in 1849 that on Friday, 13th April, Sarah had given birth to triplets (2 girls and a boy), all of whom were doing well.

Author’s Comment
So we know, or think we know, that in the 1830s, Joseph Fremlin lived at “Palmers”, a house on the site of the current pub. It seems likely that, as he was involved in the brewing trade during the 1830s, he saw an opportunity to turn the residential house into a pub. So, by 1841, “Palmers” had been renamed the ‘Black Horse’ and was operating as the new pub (maybe supplied with beer from the brewery in Wateringbury) and the Old Black Horse at the top of the road had closed and became a private residential house.

3.3 The Skudders (1858 – 1883)
In 1858, Thomas Skudder was listed as the publican of the Black Horse in Melville’s Directory of Kent. He was also a shopkeeper, so it is probable that he and his wife, Harriet, ran a shop in the pub. His wife died in 1858, and he died in 1865. In 1871, his unmarried daughter Mary (28) was shown as the Innkeeper assisted by her sister, Miller (19). Her two brothers, blacksmiths and her daughter Clara (7), lived there too. There were also three lodgers and a stablehand. Ten years later, in 1881, the three females were all still at the pub and were listed as Innkeepers and grocers. Miller Skudder married Joseph Hills in 1883, and they had one son and two daughters. She very sadly died in childbirth in 1888. Around this time, the tenancy passed on to Joseph Hills.

3.4 Joseph Hills (1883 – 1904)
By the time of the census of 1891, the Skudders had gone, and the new publican and grocer was Joseph Hills (33). He was a widower and lived there with his father, Phillip (74), son Clive (7) and daughter Ivy (4).
By 1901 all four people were still at the Black Horse but had been joined by Joseph’s second wife, Eunice Burr (39), three more daughters, Milly (12), Eunice (8) and Bernice (6) and a second son Joseph (2). There were also two lodgers. In 1901, the day after the census was taken, a third son, Frank, was born.
In 1902, the landlord, Leney & Co, valued the premises at £323 and the stock at £137. Around this time, there is a record that E. Goldsmith ran the pub.
The Hills family were builders, and in 1904, they left the Black Horse and moved to Holly Place, where they had just finished building.

Frank married and moved into Hatham Green bungalow (now Fieldfare) in 1928 before moving back into Holly Place when his father died. Joseph married in 1938 and moved into No 1 Martins Hill Cottages on Malthouse Road. His wife taught at Stansted School. They moved to Fieldfare (the bungalow) after Frank moved out.

3.5 James Norton (1904 – 1919 (or later)
In 1905, the landlord, Leney & Co, valued the premises at £408 and the stock at £46.
A newspaper search reveals a 1908 case of drunkenness at the Black Horse. The details are at the end of this article.

The 1911 census shows the publican James Norton (55) and his mother, Sophia (84) from East London. He was also a grocer (with the shop presumably being at the pub). Also living there were Ada Solomon, a 34-year-old housekeeper, and Ernest Burnett, an ostler (29). Ernest was from a Stansted family who lived at Parsons Farm. He had previously served in the Army, and when he rejoined the military in late 1915, he gave his address as the Black Horse. Sadly, he died at the Battle of the Somme less than a year later.

This 1920 photograph is one of the earliest known images of the Black Horse Hotel. The sign is Leney and Sons Ltd of Wateringbury. Image courtesy of Fairseat Archive

Author’s Comment
This is conjecture, but the building in the 1920 photograph looks fairly new and is almost certainly not “Palmers” that had been there since 1778 or earlier. Its architectural style is also more Victorian than country Georgian. In your author’s opinion, the building looks like a generic railway hotel/public house that may have been built using a Leneys brewery template design.

There was a central front door, and the interior was laid out as two bars with an off-licence counter in between. The design included a family/events room, and all the rooms had high ceilings. Your author has also seen a catalogue of photographs of Frederick Leney pubs. Many followed the same architectural style (e.g. The Papermakers Arms in Plaxtol and many others).

An 1885 map of Stansted shows a building called the Black Horse with the same footprint as it exists currently. So, was the building that started life as “Palmers” and became the Black Horse demolished/ burned down and rebuilt around this time? There is no compelling evidence to support this suggestion, but in addition to the architecture, Sheila Parker recalls that her aunt, Mahala Hollands, had told her that, at some stage, the Black Horse pub had burned down. Mahala was born in 1903, lived at Rumney Farm in 1916 and attended Stansted School with her sister and brother, so she is a reliable source. Mahala later married the brother of Sheila Parker’s father, Stanley Brown, and died at the age of 96. He was “Browns Transport“ of Ash and owned the petrol garage (opposite the New Ash Green turning).
There is also a suggestion that the building was built as a railway hotel in anticipation of a railway branch line that was never built. An examination of the various railway expansion schemes over the years in the Meopham/ Longfield/ Fawkham/ Farningham area has revealed no such plans, so this theory is unlikely.

Author’s Comment
So, on the balance of probabilities, it seems that the building that was initially called “Palmers’ and had been used as a pub since the 1830s burned down around 1885 and was rebuilt in its current form by Frederick Leney & Sons.

3.6 Frank John and E.C. Sanders (1921). A. Temple (May 1924). F.W.E. Toole (October 1925) Thomas Henry Masters. Joseph Albert Valente (June 1930).
The information available for the decade between 1920 and 1930 needs to be clarified and is contradictory. The above names are all mentioned as ‘occupants’ of the pub.

3.7 Walter Thorogood (1928? – 1930)
His start date is unknown, but he is recorded as leaving in August 1930. Later in this article is a strange court case involving the book ‘A Small Cocktail’ in which Walter was a successful litigant.

3.8 Major Gerald W. Lee (1931 – 1934)
Gerald Lee was ex Royal Field Artillery. He started in November 1931 and was there in June 1933 when he was fined for allowing after-hours drinking at the premises. This involved Henry Martin, Frank E. Wheetman, William T. Webb, Thomas Webb, Charles Wenban and Thomas J. Brooker. The whole story of the case is at the end of this article.

3.9 Arthur Woodrow (1934 – 1939)
He was publican in May 1934 and was still at the pub in 1938.

3.10 Arthur H Gladwish (1939 until 1945 or later)
Arthur was the Licensee of the pub in 1939, aged 50. He was a Police Constable from Forest Gate in East London. He lived there with his wife, Edith, and their two children.

3.11 James/ Ethel Eversfield (1950? – 1958)
The Eversfields were at the pub in 1954 and left in 1958. Sheila Parker remembers the local Mothers and Babies clinic being at the pub in the 1950s (full story later in this article).

3.12 Cyril ‘Tommy’ Tucker (1958 – 1977)
His wife, Molly, and their daughter, Penny, ran the pub from 1958 until 1976. Their daughter is now Penny Leeves and lives in Labour-in-Vain Road with her husband Peter. Ownership of the building passed to Fremlins in 1961 and to Whitbread Fremlins in 1967.

Cyril was a popular landlord and a great supporter of village causes, including the cricket club and the village hall (he was one of the original trustees). Molly was a keen fundraiser for the Kent Association for the Blind.

During the 1970s, the pub was a popular meeting point for the West Kent Hunt.

In 1974, a planning application to build 4 houses on land north of the pub was made and subsequently withdrawn. In 1975, a revised application to build 2 houses was refused.

3.13 Brian and Mary Keast (1977 – 1996)
They held a 21-year Lease from 1977 from Whitbread Fremlins at a current rental (1992) of £8,000 pa with a tie on beers and lagers. The tenants had full repair responsibilities. The following rent review was due in 1993 and every three years after that.
In 1977 the lease described the layout and uses of the various rooms as follows:

Ground floor
– Left Hand childrens room
– Side entrance and lobby
– Games room adjoining
– Centre Public bar with entrance lobby and servery
– Saloon bar with servery and storeroom
– Games bar
– Dining Room
– Kitchen
– Conservatory
– Ladies WC
First floor
– Bathroom
– Bedroom 1 adjoining
– Bedroom 2 opposite
– Bedroom 3 adjoining
– Bedroom 4 adjoining
– Sitting room adjoining
– Bedroom 5 opposite
– Landing and stairs to the ground floor
Cellar
Gents WC outside

In 1977, Jim Fardell drew up plans to alter the ground floor internal layout of the pub. Jim was an architect and, around the same time, designed and built Hollytree House on Tumblefield Road. The alterations to the pub involved moving the ladies’ and gents’ toilets to occupy part of the right-hand bar and enlarging that bar by utilising a storeroom behind and extending into the middle bar. The kitchen remained in the room that is currently the rear ‘Conservatory’. Penny Leeves remembers “Where the current toilets are was the saloon bar. Both the ladies’ and gents’ toilets were outside. Ladies had to go outside and up the steps to the door where the smoking shelter is now and put 1d in the slot. Gents had to walk down the corridor into the current kitchen. The back room in the pub is the old kitchen, where Cyril prepares the meals and makes his own bread. The current dining room was called the long room. In here was a Dadlums table and also a pianola where you put in a penny, and it played a lot of tunes.”
In 1978, planning consent was given to extend the car park.
Brian and Mary’s stepson, Stephen, was a keen cricketer and member of the village side. The pub was the natural retirement place after a long day in the field, as your author can attest.
Brian and Mary bought the pub’s freehold from Whitbread Fremlins at auction in July 1992 for £75,000.
After selling the pub in 1996 for £195,000, Brian and Mary returned to their home town of Chesterfield. Brian died in 2001, and Mary in 2009.

3.14 Ian Duncan and Anne Roberts (1996 – 2012)
Ian, a proud Scotsman, was also the landlord of the Wat Tyler pub in Dartford. He and Anne bought the Black Horse from Brian and Mary in September 1996 for £195,000. Brian and Mary had struggled to sell enough beer to keep a proper rotation of barrels. Ian was able to put a barrel on at the Black Horse and, halfway through, move it to the Wat Tyler, where the remainder sold quickly. This worked well, and the Black Horse’s reputation for serving decent beer improved enormously.
Ian, Anne, and Anne’s daughter, Laura, also built up the restaurant business, partly with the aid of one of the first Thai restaurants in the area and later through a mixture of home cooking and pub meals. During this time, the kitchen was moved from the ‘conservatory’ area and repositioned at the back of the restaurant, replacing the children’s and private sitting rooms.
In 2002, a planning application for two guest lodges (one new and one a conversion of an outhouse) was refused.
At Christmas 2007 came the bizarre but tragic ‘Suicide by Cop’ story – see para 4.5 below.
Ian died, and Anne was forced to give up on running the pub. She then leased it to Ricky and Terry Marsh in 2012.

3.15 Ricky Alexander Marsh and Teresa Marsh (2012 – 2022)
Ricky and Terry leased the pub from Anne Roberts. Their adult daughters, Frankie and Georgie, all worked in the pub behind the bar and served food. The pub and restaurant were very popular but closed in 2020 due to Covid. Like many hospitality venues, post-Covid trade was much lower than before, and the lease ended in 2022. The owner, Anne Roberts, then sold the freehold to Vicky Collier and Danny Jarvis.

3.16 Victoria Collier, Danny Jarvis and family from 2022 to date

4. STORIES
4.1 1908 – Drunkenness. The Kent and Sussex Courier – 15/5/1908
A newspaper search reveals a 1908 case of drunkenness at the Black Horse. The Kent and Sussex Courier reported that Herbert Streatfield had been summoned for being drunk on licensed premises at Stansted [Ed: Goodness – I thought that is where you went to get drunk!].
P.C. Field said that he had visited the Black Horse, Stansted, at 2.30 pm and had found the defendant in the public bar asleep and drunk. In front of him was a pot containing beer. The PC said that he had told the landlord about the defendant’s state, and the landlord had replied, “I didn’t think the man was so bad as that.” Valentine Blake, a roadman of Stansted, expressed the opinion that Streatfield was drunk when he saw him at 2.45 in the afternoon, and Mrs Clara Martin, who saw the defendant about the same time, said, “He looked drunk.”
The defendant, in the box, denied the charge. He said he entered the Black Horse at about 10.30 am and remained there until 2.30 pm. During that time, he had only two pints of beer. When he left, he walked home without assistance. He returned to the public house shortly before 4 pm the same day. Herbert Denn, a baker of Wrotham, who saw the defendant at the Black Horse at 3.45 pm, stated that, in his opinion, the man was then sober, and George Booker also said the defendant was not drunk between 12 and 1 o’clock when he (the witness) entered the Black Horse. The Bench imposed a fine of 2s 6d and 19s 6d costs or a week’s imprisonment.
[Note: Interestingly, the following year, when there was a hearing about the pub’s licence, it was only renewed when P.C. Field testified that since the conviction in 1908, he had the public house under observation, and it had been conducted satisfactorily. In his opinion, it was required [!] in the neighbourhood.”]

4.2 1930 – “A Small Cocktail.” A County Court Story Of A Book Of Recipes – The Kent and Sussex Courier 14/07/1933
A somewhat unusual case came before His Honour Judge Konstam at Sevenoaks County Court on Monday, where Mr Walter Thorogood was the plaintiff and Mr W. W. Alcock, of Cranbrook, the defendant, the latter being represented by Mr Piper.
Mr Thorogood said that in February of 1930, he was the licensee of the Black Horse Hotel, Stansted, and Mr Alcock was the licensee of the Lion Hotel, Farningham. Mr Alcock came to see him and said his son, who ran the bar at The Lion, had left him, and he (Mr Alcock) was handicapped in running it himself due to his lack of knowledge of mixing cocktails. Mr Thorogood volunteered to help him by lending him the book that formed the subject of the action, from which he could copy and return it to Mr. Thorogood. It was entitled “A Small Cocktail.” Two months later, Mr. Thorogood visited Mr. Alcock and asked for the book. Mr. Alcock said he had been too busy to copy the book, but it was safely locked up in the bar, and he would return it within a few days. Mr Thorogood had since asked for the book about six times. Six months after lending the book, Mr. Thorogood left the Black Horse and did not have trouble with it as his daughter was in the defendant’s employ, and he thought he could get it any time. Later, he settled down in Canvey Island. Here he promised the book to a friend, but he contracted blood poisoning “which kept him a prisoner,” and he could not go and see Mr Alcock, so he asked his daughter to bring the book when she came home, but she did not do so, and the book had never been returned. He valued the book at £2 2s. It was a book of cocktail recipes, which had been printed by an American expert for private circulation among friends, and a witness had gotten it through a shipping manager he knew.
Mr. Piper: He lent the book to Mr. Alcock instead of Mrs. Alcock. He paid £1 1s. for it to cover the cost of printing. It gave all the attributes of cocktails and what they were for.
Mr Piper: “Did it give the result after you had taken them?”
Mr Thorogood: “That followed according to who took it!”
Mr Thorogood said the book gave specific gravities that allowed them to make cocktails of varying colours without fusing them.
Mr Piper suggested to Mr Thorogood that the book was lent to Mrs Alcock, and the defendant said he did not want it back and eventually gave it to her when he gave up business at The Black Horse. In the meantime, Mr Piper continued, and Mr Alcock left the Lion at Farningham and went to Cranbrook. In transit, the book was lost but had recently been found and immediately returned to the Court.
Mrs Alcock gave evidence that the book produced was the one given to her by Mr Thorogood.
His Honour entered judgment for the plaintiff (Mr. Thorogood) and awarded £1 1s and costs.

4.3 1933 – Stansted Licensee Fined. The Kent and Sussex Courier – 02/06/1933
Major Gerald W. Lee, the licensee of the Black Horse, Stansted, pleaded guilty at Malling Police Court on Monday to selling intoxicating liquors during non-permitted hours on May 10. Six Stansted residents, who pleaded guilty, were summoned for consuming the liquor on the same occasion. They were Henry Martin, Frank E. Wheetman, William T. Webb, Thomas Webb, Charles Wenban and Thomas J. Brooker.
Sergt. Goodall, who said he was in plain clothes with P.C. Fleming, described how, at 11 p.m. on May 10, they were passing the Black Horse, noticed lights in the public bar, and heard men’s voices. For about 10 minutes, they observed the licensee draw six half-pints of bitter and hand them to the other defendants. The bar door was open, and he entered with P.C. Fleming. The licensee expressed his sorrow and said they were all local lads.” He tried all the drinks and found they were “bitters.”
Mr. C. H. Ellis, in mitigation, said that Major Lee was formerly in the Royal Field Artillery and served in the South African and the late war. He took over the license in November 1932, and it was then the custom for darts and other games to be played in the small public bar. He ruled that the games should not be played on Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays as they caused some inconvenience to the older customers. The rule did not meet with the approval of the young customers, and on May 10, an argument started about the matter. The argument became rather heated, but later it became less heated and about 11 o’clock, one of the defendants said: “ Well, give us a drink, and we will think no more about it.” Foolishly and without realising the seriousness of what he was doing, Major Lee gave them the drinks.
The Bench fined the licensee 10s on each of the six summonses and the other defendants 5s each.

4.4 1944 Mother and Babies Clinic
Local resident Sheila Parker remembers visiting a mother and baby clinic at the Black Horse in 1944 to see her sister being weighed and generally checked over by Dr. Bolton Snr from Borough Green. This was, of course, pre National Health Service. Sheila recalls, “The clinic was held in the large room at the top end of the pub with a lovely big roaring fire in the grate. I don’t know if any money was involved at all, but I do remember the bottles of welfare orange juice; it was very strong stuff! Obviously, it was all part of a Government welfare scheme trying to keep us all healthy because I remember the school dentist coming every year to the school, doctor’s examinations and our lessons from a mobile cinema on cleaning our teeth, etc.”. Penny Leeves confirms that during the war, Nurse Oliver would visit, and the babies would be weighed, and cod liver oil would be dispensed.’

4.5 2007 Fatal Shooting (Suicide by Cop).
On Saturday, the 29th December 2007, the police were alerted to a man in Tumblefield Road, Stansted, brandishing a gun. When the Police arrived, the man pointed the gun at them, and they opened fire and killed him. The following is a summary of the full story which appears in the Events section of this website.
Resident Reg Riggs says that he was in the Black Horse the previous evening (Friday, 28th December, 2007) with Ashley Whatman and others, and they fell into conversation with the man in question, who was about 35-40 years old. He said he had family members living in Labour in Vain Road, Stansted but did not live in the village himself. He had indicated that he had marital difficulties and seemed to try to chat up the barmaid. When she left at closing time, he followed her out, and Reg and Ashley were concerned for her safety, so they followed him out to make sure that nothing untoward happened.
The man then parked his car in the Stansted Lodge farmyard and slept there for the night. In the morning, he walked down Tumblefield Road with a gun (which turned out to be a replica) and, about 100 yards up the hill from Stone Rede, confronted the Police, who shot him dead.
Pub landlady Anne Roberts said she and other staff had noticed a man who appeared “troubled” in the Black Horse on Tumblefield Road on Friday night. She said, “He stood out… he told us he was originally from this area but now lived in Wiltshire or Dorset. “He said he was on a trip down memory lane.” Ms Roberts said the man was white, balding and in his late 30s.
Opening the jury inquest, lawyer Catherine Milson said Mr Tucker had spent the previous evening in the Black Horse pub in Stansted village, where he had drunk between eight and ten vodka and Red Bulls followed by a double vodka. While there, he chatted with barmaid Heidi Bradfield, who ‘had a feeling that he was deeply sad’.