Somerset Standard - 08 September 1972

'Last pints, please' again at Paulton

FOR WELL over a century the Rose and Crown public house at Withy Mills, Paulton, has served the local community, but from yesterday it is a pub no more.

The policy of closing such country pubs has over the years altered the balance of pub life in Paulton, for this is the seventh Paulton pub to be closed by the brewer since the last war.

This latest closure has severed a family link, for licensee Mr Frederick "Jimmy" Workman has been licensee there for over 48 years and his late father, Mr. Sam Workman was licensee there for seven years previously.

In fact, Mr. Workman agreed it would hardly pay the brewers to modernise the old pub on the fringe of the village, which has remained a beer house, but some of customers "were a bit upset when I told them," said Mr. Workman

"They liked to come in for a drink and game of cards, darts or dominoes and we had regular customers from Bath and Bristol. There is no doubt that I shall miss their company, particularly evenings," he added.

But Mr. Workman and his wife Winifred will not be leaving their old home. They have bought the four-bedroom pub which stands in a quarter-acre of land adjoining the Methodist Church.

Mr. Workman was a keen supporter of Paulton Rovers AFC and he was a president of the former Withy Mills Football Club.

Although he was crippled with polio at the age of eight months and broke his crippled leg about six years ago, Mr. Workman never lost interest in his large garden, which is a showpiece for a man who has to do his work sitting on an improvised stool.

"I love my garden," he said.

In addition he keeps poultry, rabbits and bees. "I can always go down my garden and get a dinner and there are very few people who can say that today," said Mr. Workman.