the history of yeovil's pubs
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milford inn
Milford Road
One of Yeovil's architecturally uninspired 1950's estate pubs. It has been struggling for years and is now (2012) closed and for sale. I did visit once - in the mid-1970's - and it was so unwelcoming I never dared return.
Only a couple of licensees are known - Victor Cook was licensee of the Full Moon in Wine Street for twenty years or so before leaving in 1954 to run the newly-opened Milford Inn but by 1960 he was running the Volunteer Inn in Hendford.
In the 1960s, the Milford was run by Sydney Archibald Frank Wood, always known as Frank, and his wife. Frank was, for some years, Chairman of the South Somerset Local Victuallers' Association and represented Yeovil landlords at the National Association.
The following is from the Western gazette of 13 January 2011 -
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Pub flats scheme An application to demolish a Yeovil pub building and replace it with a block of flats have been resubmitted to planners. Planning permission was granted in 2008 to replace the Milford Inn, on Milford Road, with 13 two-bedroom flats in a "two and a half storey" building. A three-year deadline for work to start on the development expired on January 11, and the new application seeks to renew the 2008 permission. The development could lead to more than £77,000 towards community and leisure facilities as part of a planning agreement. |
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Yeovilians remember.... Thanks to Tim of Orkney for the following, the second paragraph especially answering a lot of people's questions!! - "I lived at 109 Milford Road with my parents from 1960 until 1984. When I left Yeovil College in 1975 I went to Bournemouth College to study for a Diploma in Business Studies. During one vacation I worked as a barman at the Milford Inn. I left fairly quickly because I found myself working for a totally unscrupulous landlord. I discovered after a short time, that he had devised an ingenious device which, when inserted into a partly empty keg of Bass Special, would enable him to pour all the beer slops back into the cask! What was really strange that that the largely local customers never complained about the beer. On the other hand perhaps it explains why the place largely had only local customers! " |
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Yeovilians remember.... Thanks to Lorraine Langford, whose parent ran the Milford Inn during the later 1960s, for the following - "Standing in front, looking at it, to the left was the public bar, in the middle the off licence and to the right were two bars, one at the front and one behind it, both lounge bars of some fashion. The entrance to the private quarters was in the middle at the back, straight up the. The public bar was like a horseshoe around the rooms." |
gallery
A colourised photograph of 1960, by Charrington & Co Ltd's surveyors as part of a 'stocktaking' exercise of photographing Brutton's pubs prior to the brewery takeover.
The Milford Inn football team of 1968. They started the Sunday morning football league in Yeovil under the direction of landlord Frank Wood.
Back row (left
to right) -
Unknown,
Bill Bray, Fricky Frost,
Foxy Fowler, Les
Brown, Ron Lee
and Jim Day.
Front row (left
to right) - Rory
Toogood, Brian
Davidson, Bobby
Westcott, Tony
Davey and Brian
'Ginger' Newman.
I was told that the chap in the back row at far left was Frank Wood, but his daughter Lorraine says that it isn't. Nevertheless, Lorraine recalls - "I have memories of him once playing football for the team, a charity match I believe, in a sheepskin coat, smoking a cigar and running the opposite way when the ball came his way."
Courtesy of
Maxine Hawker
Regulars of the Milford Inn pose for a photo on the bank by Milford Road, opposite the pub. From the clothes, I'd guess at the late 1960s.
Courtesy of
Chris Rendell
The Milford Inn photographed in 1989.
The Milford Inn photographed in 2012.
licensees
1957 – V Cook
(1957 Yeovil
Directory)
listed as
Milford Inn – by
1960 Victor Cook
was running
the
Volunteer Inn
in Hendford
1960 – Licensee
not named (1960
Yeovil
Directory)
listed as
Milford Inn
1965 – Licensee
not named (1965
Yeovil
Directory)
listed as
Milford Inn
1968 – Frank
Wood
1968 – Licensee
not named
(Kelly’s 1968
Directory)
listed as
Milford Inn
1969 – Licensee
not named
(Kelly’s 1969
Directory)
listed as
Milford Inn
1970 – Licensee
not named
(Kelly’s 1970
Directory)
listed as
Milford Inn
1971 – Licensee
not named
(Kelly’s 1971
Directory)
listed as
Milford Inn
1972 – Licensee
not named
(Kelly’s 1972
Directory)
listed as
Milford Inn
1973 – Licensee
not named
(Kelly’s 1973
Directory)
listed as
Milford Inn
1974 – Licensee
not named (1974
Yeovil
Directory)
listed as
Milford Inn
1987 – Licensee
not named
(Denton’s 1987
Directory)
listed as
Milford Inn
