A conversation overheard between an American visitor and an Ottery resident in one of our pubs triggered the topic of our contribution this week.

The American visitor was captivated by the history enclosed in the place and pointed out what those walls must have heard throughout the centuries. The resident comment on the past existence of 15 pubs in Ottery brought us back to the sad reality of the present times.

The tales and history sealed in our pub walls are as intriguing as those attributed to our town. The old newspaper snippets provided by David Stevens to support this article justify our visitor comments.

The reports on the connection between our pubs and the barrelers of the most famous event in town and some others would trigger the imagination of the most unconvinced. If it was the Red Lion Inn and 600 individuals receiving the solemn rite of confirmation, or the New Inn having its license denied in 1867, or The Swan also described as a merchant and grocer, or Stafford House with its cellar bar “Skips” or the Railway Inn and its connection with Jack the Ripper; still fires and development demands seem to have haunted our pubs.

The tale following the Golden Lion of an employee being a bit of a pyromaniac perhaps explains the fire that almost destroyed the pub in 1848. What it is today, the London Inn, also suffered a disastrous fire in 1982. Equally, in June 1765, a fire at the White Heart Inn first burnt a back house where, unfortunately, the town fire engine was kept and afterwards consumed the dwelling house and 23 more.

Others were victims of development and modernisation, such as the Five Bells demolished in 1970 to make way for Canaan Way. The Half Moon, once in North Street, reputedly an animal pound in the past, has been converted to housing. The Plume of Feathers, situated on Yonder Street, was demolished and replaced by housing. The Masons Arms was a Heavitree pub on Sandhill Street that closed in 1999 and is now a private house.

But there are other accounts that give us an inside of what life and law and order was in old days. The annual Court Leet of the Lord of the Manor of Ottery and the Division Petty Sessions held at the King's Arms Hotel and the London Hotel undoubtedly gave enough material to the newspapers of those days to report on. Interesting reading makes the case of Henry Isaacs, summoned for trespassing in pursuit of game on land belonging to Sir J. Kennaway; or the landlord of the Lamb & Flag summoned in 1863 for having a drunken and disorderly party in his house. In defence it was stated that the men were going off after fish, and were waiting for that purpose.

Even more intriguing is the case of an assault on a tailor at the Mason's Arms Inn by biting off the top of the index finger of his left hand or a worker sent to forced labour convicted of the heinous crime of sleeping in a latrine behind the Plume of Feathers Inn. Hunter's Lodge now Hare & Hound has a happy story of two boys sent to Ottery in an errant and did not return. The decision to drag the river was about to be taken when they found the two boys in the pub.

The history of our towns is kept today in pubs such as the London Inn, where the Division Petty Sessions took place, or the King's Arms which was sold at auction in 1864 after stating that the property value would increase upon completion of a branch of the London and South Western Railway to Sidmouth and Salterton; and not to forget our well-known Volunteer Inn, a pub that has been part of Ottery since 1810, opened as a home, inn and recruiting centre for the Napoleonic War and in 1908 home of the Ottery Wheelers cycling club.

Whatever history our remaining pubs hold within their walls, that heritage can't be lost, and we must preserve it.