Three centuries of ale.
One of aeroplanes.
Scroll through 365 years at the sign of the John Barleycorn — from the earth below to the sky above.
An alehouse on the Duxford road
The year the King came back, someone put a thatched roof over a brew-house on the road through Duxford. Coaches stopped, horses were changed, travellers slept under the eaves.
By the 1800s it was kept by the three Halliwell sisters, who between them ran the taproom, the kitchen and — village legend says — most of the parish.
"There were three men come out of the west,The Ballad of John Barleycorn · traditional
their fortunes for to try —
and these three men made a solemn vow:
John Barleycorn must die."
The old song is the story of barley itself — cut down each harvest, and reborn every year as beer. A good name for a pub, we've always thought.
Engines over the hedgerow
Two and a half centuries in, the quiet ended. The flying field over the hedge — laid out in the first war — became RAF Duxford, home to fighters. Biplanes circled the village all summer, and young men in blue found their way to our taproom.
The pub and the aerodrome have been neighbours ever since.
The pilots' local
Through that long summer, Duxford's squadrons — Douglas Bader's Big Wing among them — climbed out of the airfield next door to meet whatever was coming. When they came back, a lot of them came here.
Log books closed, pints opened. The beams above the bar heard more of that summer than most history books hold.
The Americans arrive
The 78th Fighter Group of the US Army Air Forces took over the field, flying Thunderbolts and later Mustangs over occupied Europe. Duxford filled with new accents, big bands and chewing gum.
The Eagle in Cambridge got their signatures on the ceiling. We got the quieter evenings — and we've kept them to ourselves.
The ones who didn't come back
Our four rooms are named for pilots who flew from Duxford. One is kept for a young airman who had his last pint under this roof and never landed again.
Raise a glass when you're in. They'd have liked that.
Same thatch, fresh chapter
The aerodrome next door is now the Imperial War Museum, and the Spitfires still fly most summer weekends — you can hear the Merlins from the garden.
Under the thatch, not much has really changed since 1660: the fire's lit, the barley's become beer, and John Barleycorn — cut down and come back yet again — is on the pumps. Come and have one where the pilots did.
The table's waiting
Book for lunch, stay the night, or just come and find the history on the walls.