@Croider said:
As a mid 20s year old resident of High Wycombe in 2022, where is there that is still even open past 12 that isn't Trilogy or Butlers? Or these wonder tales of pubs from the yester years make me jealous.
@Croider said:
As a mid 20s year old resident of High Wycombe in 2022, where is there that is still even open past 12 that isn't Trilogy or Butlers? Or these wonder tales of pubs from the yester years make me jealous.
Whats the situation with the Antelope?
It's not somewhere you rationally decide to go, put it that way.
@Croider said:
As a mid 20s year old resident of High Wycombe in 2022, where is there that is still even open past 12 that isn't Trilogy or Butlers? Or these wonder tales of pubs from the yester years make me jealous.
Whats the situation with the Antelope?
It's not somewhere you rationally decide to go, put it that way.
That's a real pity. Nights out in Wycombe were never great, but there was always a good variety of places to go.
Club X will eventually be featured as one of the Uk's legendary underground rave clubs.
The two propeitors one is now a resident in Ibiza, the other one, who was prominent in the 1970's Wycombe punk scene, I believe has sadly passed away.
The London Bus Emporium was never particularly stringent on age checking, which was very much a plus at the time.
Quick mention for The Orchard as well. Would often end up there after hours in search of an extra couple of drinks (the evening would almost always start with all those present vowing they definitely weren't going). This was also a popular hangout for Wanderers players at the time
@eric_plant said:
The London Bus Emporium was never particularly stringent on age checking, which was very much a plus at the time.
Quick mention for The Orchard as well. Would often end up there after hours in search of an extra couple of drinks (the evening would almost always start with all those present vowing they definitely weren't going). This was also a popular hangout for Wanderers players at the time
I'd always end up at the Orchard about an hour after being absolutely adamant that that under no circumstances was I going there !
Used to frequent the London Bus Emporium - although quite often I think during the day for coffee. Seem to remember there was a jazz night I used to go to there in the mid-90s but may have that bit confused
@Croider said:
As a mid 20s year old resident of High Wycombe in 2022, where is there that is still even open past 12 that isn't Trilogy or Butlers? Or these wonder tales of pubs from the yester years make me jealous.
Don't be. It all sounds great dressed up with a bit of nostalgia but the truth is that Wycombe has always been dire. There was a bit of a rock scene (years after most towns had moved on from all that) and there were a handful of decent nights down Club X and The Attic but in reality they were few and far between. The Antelope was usually busy and for my money the best pub. The London Bus Emporium lasted about five minutes, mainly because the owner was a bit of a spanner.
@bookertease said:
Used to frequent the London Bus Emporium - although quite often I think during the day for coffee. Seem to remember there was a jazz night I used to go to there in the mid-90s but may have that bit confused
Club X was quite a trendsetter one of the first legal all night rave clubs in England outside London already up and running in 1989 remember acid house only started as a mass movement in 1988 at Oakenfold's Spectrum, Club X was the darkest club I've ever been to in one room when the lights weren't on it was actually pitch black. The Ministry of Sound used yo have their black box on Friday's where the more hard house/trance /techno was played but even that wasn't as dark as Club X in that room!
Wycombe had who were referred to at one time as one of the best rap crews in Britain with Caveman we had Dance Conspiracy who's /Dub Wars' is still spoken of as one of the greatest hardcore tunes ever released and DJ Pulse and Rude Bwoy Monty all big on the jungle scene nationally. We also had one of the earliest ever jungle tunes 'Johnny Jungle' by Johnny Jungle recorded by Wycombe producers,. Wax Doctor was nearby. We even had reggae singer Judy Boucher who got to number 2 in the pop chart frpm Wycombe after her fame she used to work in the council offices at the housing counter.
Besides that was seedy pick up jpints like Foxes, Top Cats, Tuesdays, Woollys, The Orchard, Fawlty Towers etc and pubs like The Bell and Flint Cottage which used to charge you 50p to stay for a disco until 2am.
But obviously we were also on the doorsyep of London and we used to be able to get from last orders in the Hour Glass or Happy Wanderer to the crew for places like Strawberry Sundae, mInd Over Matter and Rage in central London in about half an hour straight down the M40. Yes they were good years back in Wycombe especially 88-97 (I moved up north in 97 sp don't know what happened after that.
@arnos_grove said:
Biggest celeb you’ve ever seen as a paying punter in The Orchard? For me, it was John De Wolf.
Matey who used to be in the Professionals, Bodie or Doyle, can't remember which one
Orchard - Take a mattress strapped to your back ladies
Lewis Collins (Bodie) actually owned the Orchard for a while.
It was Bodie - Lewis Collins , other celebs like Bryan Robson used to stay in the Orchard after the 2 o'clock kick out for lates - Robson was in the Newof the World one weekend for getting pissed in their and exposing himself to some chosen girls who had been allowed to stay for the lock-in.. They used to have bird-eating spiders in tanks at certain parts of the Orchard - believe it or not people stole at least one of them. I myself was chucked out of a club literally for the first and only time in my life my mates got involved in a fracas near the door amd I sort of got sucked in a big bouncer picked me up copetely and thre me out of the door - really! And I wss too pissed for it to even hurt,
And don't forget Wycombe was slap bang in the epicentre of the legendary massive illegal M25 orbital acid parties of late 1988 and 1989 - a few miles away we had White Waltham scene of the biggest rave ever - headline news in the tabloids the next day "Ecstasy Airport" as it was held at a small airpark one of the other biggest was at Longwick and the first I remember going to was near Watford we all used to meet at South Mimms and Heston services just down or up the Motorway before or after the raves..The Wycombe area had its own rave at disused Jacksons Mill in Bourne End/Wooburn Green very early - when acid house parties were still called warehouse parties. That was a good night - I had the flyer for years until me and the ex missus split up and i lost all my old rave flyers and photos when the locks were changed on our house before we could get the final lot of stuff out and to our new places..
@HolmerBlue said:
Ahh so many old pubs... who remembers the Grapes on the high st, and Fagin's down the road just past where the Thai place is now ?
The Antelope used to be good years back, havnt been in there for a long time though
Just old enough to remember the Grapes - probably 17 when it closed went n about once - I just missed out on the pub just before the Octagon (near the record shop) White Hart or something that burnt down but allegedly when the firemen inspected it afterwards the till had been cleaned out when obviously the fire wouldn't have burnt every note (if any) completely in the till ".
Nearly 25 years since I left Wycombe and this thread made me feel very nostalgic. I originally posted this under my old name Rochdale Exile on a thread that I subsequently realised was dead so to have all my posts under the name I've used for all my others since I moved the ten miles to Bury I thought some of these pub memories might trigger the memories of us "80s and early 90s 'youth'" and make younger people remember the "delight"s they missed.
I love the reminiscing over the old Wycombe boozers from the days when there were probably twice as many open.
My "favourites" from the 80s/90s were The Falcon for a few before going to Tuesday's/Oceans - my first regular nightclub.
The Bull - rough as a badger's arse - these type of pubs just don't exist anymore - stuffing coming out of all the seats and you could see a fight here on a weekday midday if you were (un)lucky ! - between women (once!)
Hour Glass - my old local since years before Adams Park opened and and much better when it had two bars (and as was customary in most 2 bar pubs beer was 2p more expensive in the lounge) - I remember chatting to an old regular in there in the late '80s who was then in his 90s and had been drinking there since the 1920s when it opened! - once all day drinking came in 1988 our all day crawl was from here to Jolly Bodger to Half Moon to Saracen's Head to White Horse and then wherever.Dd anyone know that a drinker was shot dead in there in the 1920s?
Red Cross Knight - I was too young for the era when someone on here mentioned punks used to go in but by the time I was out drinking in Wycombe from about 1982 (about a year before it shut) this had got to the stage where the big rasta would be on the door and if you were white you could only really go in if you were buying drugs. People were taking heroin in the toilets by then and it was the discarded syringes in the bogs (all reported in gory detail the Bucks Free Press at the time) among other things that meant it eventually lost its licence. A road widening scheme is now built through where it was.
Ye Exchange - Saturday nights: old geezers with sometimes incongruously a reggae disco! Sort of situated opposite by the roundabout across from the Octagon going towards West Wycombe Road.
George V on London Road for breakfast on the way home from raves in London when the pub used to open at about 8 in the morning for a bit - you could get a beer there too at that time - because it was serving the breakfasts I think.
The Gate - always bit grim but only a few hundred yards from Loakes Park at 5 to 3 on matchdays!
The Ninepins, Hazlemere - one of the places where you could always find out telephone numbers to ring to find out where the original illegal Acid house parties were around the M25 in 1988/89.
The Angel - with the really seedy pool room upstairs with a closed up bar up there which going by the beer pumps and trays you could seen behind the pulled down metal shutter hadn't been open since the early 1970s!
Then all those pubs that closed down after a massive drugs raid by the police some never to open again The Rose, The Halfway House, THe already mentioned Red Cross Knight, The Roundabout (though it reopened as did the Falcon). It always just meant that the drug dealers would just move on to another pub take it over and then that would be raided. By the time I moved away in 1997 the police had given up as like it had al over the country drugs were so commonplace it was a pointless task and I think the police preferred to know the pubs which had the worst reputation and try to keep them all in there and know where they were!
Makes me want to come back for a wander around now but then I remember last time I was down and did that the town centre seemed to have been taken over by massive chain pubs.
When I was down in Wycombe last for the England Italy Euro Final I heard someone say that the Antelope was open till 6 in the morning (virtually a 24 hour licence I suppose) at the weekends. We used to dream about stuff like this as teens and early twenties in the 1980s. Remember pubs used to shut at 2.30 in the afternoon until 5.30/6.00 until late August 1988 - I remember the date precisely because me and my mates were all away in Corfu when the "momentous" all day drinking started. Sundays didn't go all day till about 1995.
I say we used to dream of it but it'd probably killed us the amount we used to get through in normal hours. As it is i have now been teetotal for 4 years since my liver started to feel the effects of all the booze and drugs!
@arnos_grove said:
Remember it as The Attic. It was certainly very dark.
While we’re on this topic, does anyone remember The London Bus Emporium on Castle Street? Think it was an cavernous old tyres & exhausts garage that was briefly the centre of the Wycombe social scene. Had an open-top double decker bus inside that you could sit in. A stage for bands and comedians, on which I remember Andy Kerr being hypnotised.
Quite popular with Wanderers players on Saturdays after a game.
I think that was the same night Dennis Greene did a standup routine.
@ChasHarps said:
Club X will eventually be featured as one of the Uk's legendary underground rave clubs.
The two propeitors one is now a resident in Ibiza, the other one, who was prominent in the 1970's Wycombe punk scene, I believe has sadly passed away.
Was that Mark Chapman? - I used to share a house with him and about 4 other reprobates in Downley in about 1994/95. None of us had proper jobs (I just did a bit of building labouring I picked up in the pub when I could be bothered) and spent a nice summer getting up at midday and sitting in the sun in the back garden in the detached car seats from the owner's scrap car business he ran from the garage. I don't know what the neighbours thought the house looked like a bomb had hit it with wrecked cars littering the drive and car-parts the garden.
By then he used to promote a successful 1970s disco revival club in Soho called The Carwash (I sold him a couple of records that became quite big there!) - I went up with him on occasion and he gave me free drinks and a certain other "rave synonymous substance" on the house and afterwards there's be a party back in the house in Wycombe with towels over the windows to keep it dark and with people from the club and which went on all day Sunday. TBH I didn't now he ran Club X too back in 1989/90 when it was going but I knew of the two blokes who started (fronted) it. Mark was a great bloke and they were great days and I was very sad to hear of his passing a few years ago.
Well, that’s a pretty comprehensive drinking etc history, @BuryExileWasRochdale ! Nearest we got (as a middle aged couple in the ‘seventies) was the occasional traditional jazz session in the Falcon and, remarkably (given its size), the Antelope.
We lived in Sands in the mid ‘seventies - a couple of minutes walk from the Hour Glass - so I was interested to hear that someone was shot dead there in the 1920s. I hadn’t heard that before. Or perhaps I had and had forgotten. Maybe someone on here knows more.
If I remember the story correctly, he was shot dead in his chair in the hour glass.
And the tale goes, that after that fateful day, no one would sit in that seat, as it was referred to as 'The dead man's chair' !!
This could start another thread, Wycombe pub shootings, you had the one with the bar maid shot in the iron Duke about 20 years ago. Also the fateful shooting of a girl in the Reggie Groves centre, during a dj/rap/ hip hop night.
@ChasHarps said:
If I remember the story correctly, he was shot dead in his chair in the hour glass.
And the tale goes, that after that fateful day, no one would sit in that seat, as it was referred to as 'The dead man's chair' !!
This could start another thread, Wycombe pub shootings, you had the one with the bar maid shot in the iron Duke about 20 years ago. Also the fateful shooting of a girl in the Reggie Groves centre, during a dj/rap/ hip hop night.
Was it the landlord that shot himself at the pub in Prestwood (the one that's not a pub anymore) can't remember it's name ? And someone hung themselves in the old changing rooms in the carpark of the Bat and Ball in Holmer Green
Given that it was in a place as nice as Hazlemere, The Ninepins was incongruously rough. One of those pubs where if you weren't a regular you weren't made to feel particularly welcome
The Grapes was conveniently near The Red Lion. I recall being at a dinner dance there and the bar prices were too high for one of our party who went to The Grapes and returned with several bottles of wine in a basket which was put underneath the table.That was where our bar was for the rest of the evening. The elderly wine waiter couldn't understand why our glasses were always full and didn't need to be cleared away.
Comments
Whats the situation with the Antelope?
It's not somewhere you rationally decide to go, put it that way.
That's a real pity. Nights out in Wycombe were never great, but there was always a good variety of places to go.
I'm getting too old for it anyway!
Oh I'm far too old to want a night out anywhere, but it's nice to know the old places are still going.
Club X will eventually be featured as one of the Uk's legendary underground rave clubs.
The two propeitors one is now a resident in Ibiza, the other one, who was prominent in the 1970's Wycombe punk scene, I believe has sadly passed away.
The London Bus Emporium was never particularly stringent on age checking, which was very much a plus at the time.
Quick mention for The Orchard as well. Would often end up there after hours in search of an extra couple of drinks (the evening would almost always start with all those present vowing they definitely weren't going). This was also a popular hangout for Wanderers players at the time
I'd always end up at the Orchard about an hour after being absolutely adamant that that under no circumstances was I going there !
We had no qualms at all about going to the Orchard. It was endearingly terrible and we could walk home with a kebab afterwards!
Biggest celeb you’ve ever seen as a paying punter in The Orchard? For me, it was John De Wolf.
Matey who used to be in the Professionals, Bodie or Doyle, can't remember which one
Used to frequent the London Bus Emporium - although quite often I think during the day for coffee. Seem to remember there was a jazz night I used to go to there in the mid-90s but may have that bit confused
Orchard - Take a mattress strapped to your back ladies
Lewis Collins (Bodie) actually owned the Orchard for a while.
Used to see him quite often in Winkers.
Don't be. It all sounds great dressed up with a bit of nostalgia but the truth is that Wycombe has always been dire. There was a bit of a rock scene (years after most towns had moved on from all that) and there were a handful of decent nights down Club X and The Attic but in reality they were few and far between. The Antelope was usually busy and for my money the best pub. The London Bus Emporium lasted about five minutes, mainly because the owner was a bit of a spanner.
That would have been 1993.
Club X was quite a trendsetter one of the first legal all night rave clubs in England outside London already up and running in 1989 remember acid house only started as a mass movement in 1988 at Oakenfold's Spectrum, Club X was the darkest club I've ever been to in one room when the lights weren't on it was actually pitch black. The Ministry of Sound used yo have their black box on Friday's where the more hard house/trance /techno was played but even that wasn't as dark as Club X in that room!
Wycombe had who were referred to at one time as one of the best rap crews in Britain with Caveman we had Dance Conspiracy who's /Dub Wars' is still spoken of as one of the greatest hardcore tunes ever released and DJ Pulse and Rude Bwoy Monty all big on the jungle scene nationally. We also had one of the earliest ever jungle tunes 'Johnny Jungle' by Johnny Jungle recorded by Wycombe producers,. Wax Doctor was nearby. We even had reggae singer Judy Boucher who got to number 2 in the pop chart frpm Wycombe after her fame she used to work in the council offices at the housing counter.
Besides that was seedy pick up jpints like Foxes, Top Cats, Tuesdays, Woollys, The Orchard, Fawlty Towers etc and pubs like The Bell and Flint Cottage which used to charge you 50p to stay for a disco until 2am.
But obviously we were also on the doorsyep of London and we used to be able to get from last orders in the Hour Glass or Happy Wanderer to the crew for places like Strawberry Sundae, mInd Over Matter and Rage in central London in about half an hour straight down the M40. Yes they were good years back in Wycombe especially 88-97 (I moved up north in 97 sp don't know what happened after that.
It was Bodie - Lewis Collins , other celebs like Bryan Robson used to stay in the Orchard after the 2 o'clock kick out for lates - Robson was in the Newof the World one weekend for getting pissed in their and exposing himself to some chosen girls who had been allowed to stay for the lock-in.. They used to have bird-eating spiders in tanks at certain parts of the Orchard - believe it or not people stole at least one of them. I myself was chucked out of a club literally for the first and only time in my life my mates got involved in a fracas near the door amd I sort of got sucked in a big bouncer picked me up copetely and thre me out of the door - really! And I wss too pissed for it to even hurt,
And don't forget Wycombe was slap bang in the epicentre of the legendary massive illegal M25 orbital acid parties of late 1988 and 1989 - a few miles away we had White Waltham scene of the biggest rave ever - headline news in the tabloids the next day "Ecstasy Airport" as it was held at a small airpark one of the other biggest was at Longwick and the first I remember going to was near Watford we all used to meet at South Mimms and Heston services just down or up the Motorway before or after the raves..The Wycombe area had its own rave at disused Jacksons Mill in Bourne End/Wooburn Green very early - when acid house parties were still called warehouse parties. That was a good night - I had the flyer for years until me and the ex missus split up and i lost all my old rave flyers and photos when the locks were changed on our house before we could get the final lot of stuff out and to our new places..
This all makes the 100 Club and all the other jazz clubs that proliferated during that period (and long since) seem rather tame! But I like it.
Just old enough to remember the Grapes - probably 17 when it closed went n about once - I just missed out on the pub just before the Octagon (near the record shop) White Hart or something that burnt down but allegedly when the firemen inspected it afterwards the till had been cleaned out when obviously the fire wouldn't have burnt every note (if any) completely in the till ".
Nearly 25 years since I left Wycombe and this thread made me feel very nostalgic. I originally posted this under my old name Rochdale Exile on a thread that I subsequently realised was dead so to have all my posts under the name I've used for all my others since I moved the ten miles to Bury I thought some of these pub memories might trigger the memories of us "80s and early 90s 'youth'" and make younger people remember the "delight"s they missed.
I love the reminiscing over the old Wycombe boozers from the days when there were probably twice as many open.
My "favourites" from the 80s/90s were The Falcon for a few before going to Tuesday's/Oceans - my first regular nightclub.
The Bull - rough as a badger's arse - these type of pubs just don't exist anymore - stuffing coming out of all the seats and you could see a fight here on a weekday midday if you were (un)lucky ! - between women (once!)
Hour Glass - my old local since years before Adams Park opened and and much better when it had two bars (and as was customary in most 2 bar pubs beer was 2p more expensive in the lounge) - I remember chatting to an old regular in there in the late '80s who was then in his 90s and had been drinking there since the 1920s when it opened! - once all day drinking came in 1988 our all day crawl was from here to Jolly Bodger to Half Moon to Saracen's Head to White Horse and then wherever.Dd anyone know that a drinker was shot dead in there in the 1920s?
Red Cross Knight - I was too young for the era when someone on here mentioned punks used to go in but by the time I was out drinking in Wycombe from about 1982 (about a year before it shut) this had got to the stage where the big rasta would be on the door and if you were white you could only really go in if you were buying drugs. People were taking heroin in the toilets by then and it was the discarded syringes in the bogs (all reported in gory detail the Bucks Free Press at the time) among other things that meant it eventually lost its licence. A road widening scheme is now built through where it was.
Ye Exchange - Saturday nights: old geezers with sometimes incongruously a reggae disco! Sort of situated opposite by the roundabout across from the Octagon going towards West Wycombe Road.
George V on London Road for breakfast on the way home from raves in London when the pub used to open at about 8 in the morning for a bit - you could get a beer there too at that time - because it was serving the breakfasts I think.
The Gate - always bit grim but only a few hundred yards from Loakes Park at 5 to 3 on matchdays!
The Ninepins, Hazlemere - one of the places where you could always find out telephone numbers to ring to find out where the original illegal Acid house parties were around the M25 in 1988/89.
The Angel - with the really seedy pool room upstairs with a closed up bar up there which going by the beer pumps and trays you could seen behind the pulled down metal shutter hadn't been open since the early 1970s!
Then all those pubs that closed down after a massive drugs raid by the police some never to open again The Rose, The Halfway House, THe already mentioned Red Cross Knight, The Roundabout (though it reopened as did the Falcon). It always just meant that the drug dealers would just move on to another pub take it over and then that would be raided. By the time I moved away in 1997 the police had given up as like it had al over the country drugs were so commonplace it was a pointless task and I think the police preferred to know the pubs which had the worst reputation and try to keep them all in there and know where they were!
Makes me want to come back for a wander around now but then I remember last time I was down and did that the town centre seemed to have been taken over by massive chain pubs.
When I was down in Wycombe last for the England Italy Euro Final I heard someone say that the Antelope was open till 6 in the morning (virtually a 24 hour licence I suppose) at the weekends. We used to dream about stuff like this as teens and early twenties in the 1980s. Remember pubs used to shut at 2.30 in the afternoon until 5.30/6.00 until late August 1988 - I remember the date precisely because me and my mates were all away in Corfu when the "momentous" all day drinking started. Sundays didn't go all day till about 1995.
I say we used to dream of it but it'd probably killed us the amount we used to get through in normal hours. As it is i have now been teetotal for 4 years since my liver started to feel the effects of all the booze and drugs!
I think that was the same night Dennis Greene did a standup routine.
Was that Mark Chapman? - I used to share a house with him and about 4 other reprobates in Downley in about 1994/95. None of us had proper jobs (I just did a bit of building labouring I picked up in the pub when I could be bothered) and spent a nice summer getting up at midday and sitting in the sun in the back garden in the detached car seats from the owner's scrap car business he ran from the garage. I don't know what the neighbours thought the house looked like a bomb had hit it with wrecked cars littering the drive and car-parts the garden.
By then he used to promote a successful 1970s disco revival club in Soho called The Carwash (I sold him a couple of records that became quite big there!) - I went up with him on occasion and he gave me free drinks and a certain other "rave synonymous substance" on the house and afterwards there's be a party back in the house in Wycombe with towels over the windows to keep it dark and with people from the club and which went on all day Sunday. TBH I didn't now he ran Club X too back in 1989/90 when it was going but I knew of the two blokes who started (fronted) it. Mark was a great bloke and they were great days and I was very sad to hear of his passing a few years ago.
Well, that’s a pretty comprehensive drinking etc history, @BuryExileWasRochdale ! Nearest we got (as a middle aged couple in the ‘seventies) was the occasional traditional jazz session in the Falcon and, remarkably (given its size), the Antelope.
We lived in Sands in the mid ‘seventies - a couple of minutes walk from the Hour Glass - so I was interested to hear that someone was shot dead there in the 1920s. I hadn’t heard that before. Or perhaps I had and had forgotten. Maybe someone on here knows more.
If I remember the story correctly, he was shot dead in his chair in the hour glass.
And the tale goes, that after that fateful day, no one would sit in that seat, as it was referred to as 'The dead man's chair' !!
This could start another thread, Wycombe pub shootings, you had the one with the bar maid shot in the iron Duke about 20 years ago. Also the fateful shooting of a girl in the Reggie Groves centre, during a dj/rap/ hip hop night.
Was it the landlord that shot himself at the pub in Prestwood (the one that's not a pub anymore) can't remember it's name ? And someone hung themselves in the old changing rooms in the carpark of the Bat and Ball in Holmer Green
Given that it was in a place as nice as Hazlemere, The Ninepins was incongruously rough. One of those pubs where if you weren't a regular you weren't made to feel particularly welcome
The Grapes was conveniently near The Red Lion. I recall being at a dinner dance there and the bar prices were too high for one of our party who went to The Grapes and returned with several bottles of wine in a basket which was put underneath the table.That was where our bar was for the rest of the evening. The elderly wine waiter couldn't understand why our glasses were always full and didn't need to be cleared away.