The following article, dated 22nd February 1963, was written by Richard Field and is reproduced here with kind permission from the Mercury & Herald.
'At the Sign of the Red Lion’
“All four musketeers – for one, all for beer.”
There’s never a dull moment in the bar-room of the Red Lion at Denton when the ‘four musketeers’ get together.
They are Alwyne Henry Robinson, 76; James Cawley, a 72-year-old retired roadman; Harry White, 71, a self-styled pub crank; and 78-year-old Ernie Smart.
They’ve been meeting here for years and while away many an hour supping beer and telling stories of yesteryear.
Alwyne Robinson likes to say he was a teetotaller – at least until he was 19. Then, on doctor’s orders, he started taking two pints of stout a day – ‘and I haven’t stopped since’, he jokes.
Today he drinks his Stingo No. 10 – ‘the best beer in the world’ – as he spins yarns about his days as a carrier, pig-killer, shop salesman, and licensee.
He started work, he recalls, at the tender age of six. He fed poultry night and morning for the princely sum of sixpence a week.
At 9, he remembers carrying tea to workmen building the old Cogenhoe council schools … ‘Remember it as clear as yesterday,’ he says.
Then at 12, he left school and worked in a turnip field … ‘Got my ears frozen off that winter,’ he remembers.
Next, he worked at Brafield Co-operative Society, where his dad was manager. He sold the store’s first bicycle and first pair of shoes.
‘And I’m not likely to forget another “first” at the Co-Op,’ he says, chuckling into his mug. ‘I measured a lady for her corsets. I bet you daren’t publish that ….’
Alwyne has memories, too, of his days as a carrier. ‘I used to cart coal, beer and furniture. In fact, I’d take almost anything. But there wasn’t a lot of money in it.’
He remembers carting 9-gallon kegs of beer from the brewery to Denton. He got paid 9d. – 2d. for returning the keg.
Another job: he used to fetch salt in the winters from Castle Station. The Co-Op paid him five shillings a load. He also carried coal for 1s 6d a ton. Later he was publican at the Red Lion, Bozeat.
These days he keeps himself busy doing a bit of shepherding, gardening, and—this weather—snow clearing.
Alwyne’s pal James Cawley has been a patron of the Red Lion since he was 18 – ‘that’s about 54 years, I reckon,’ he says.
James started work at 13 as a ploughboy earning 3s. 6d. a week. Later in life he was a soldier, building labourer, farm labourer, horsekeeper, and finally a roadman.
James remembers the old days in Denton with nostalgia. He recalls times when ‘everyone was pals and matey’ and when the folk at the Red Lion met to make their own entertainment with a fiddle, piano, and tin whistle.
Those were the days, he’ll tell you, when Denton folk stayed in Denton. As a boy, it was a big adventure to go as far afield as Northampton. That only happened once a year – in October for the mop fair.
More stories of yesteryear are sure to be contributed by Harry White, roadman at Little Houghton, who, at 71, is probably the council’s oldest employee, and by Ernie Smart, who has a few yarns about his life on Lord Northampton’s estate.
Red Lion licensee Mackie Hollowell knows most of the stories by heart. And so, presumably, does Jackie, his four-year-old pet jackdaw, which is as much of a ‘regular’ these days as any one of the musketeers.
The characters featured in the article are all well-known Denton folk. Alwyne Robinson, also known locally as ‘Bot the pig-killer’, held another vital role in village life not mentioned in the article—he served as the local slaughterman in days when many Dentonians kept one or more pigs, a valuable source of meat for their families. Alwyne was also famously known for drinking his Stingo No. 10 beer straight from the bottle—never from a glass.