Anchor, Walberswick

Blue Anchor from 1830 - 1865. The licensing record shows the license being transferred to the new premises on April 14th 1927. The original building was dismantled & moved down the road, where it was rebuilt as "Anchor Lea". A paperback book published in 1969, called "Inns of the Suffolk Coast" by Leonard P Thompson contains the following extract: “In the 1870s, when the inn was called the Blue Anchor, the host was Isaac Crisp. He was an obliging man, for sometimes he allowed gipsies to hire one of his rooms for a merry evening of singing, dancing & drinking. In the 1880s John Veasey was at the Blue Anchor (see Arthur Veasey at the Bell) & William Cleveland ran the Bell. Mr Ernest Winyard, who with his wife has the Tuckshop at Walberswick, & whose family ran the Anchor from 1924 until 1959, was there when the old Anchor was pulled down & the new building erected behind it, & opened at Easter, 1929. But the old building lives on. It was taken down & re-erected, timber by timber & with craftsman's care, & it stands today (1969) close by the Tuckshop, & it is called Anchor Lea. The old stables however, built of large pebbles & flints, all laid in courses, remain alongside the hotel. Mr Winyard recalls that the cellar of the old pub was 6 steps below ground level & from the cellar floor, 2 more steps dropped to a small space in front of a bricked up doorway (which contained) a passageway to the beach. (In 1969) the manager, Mr John Price (his wife is Pauline - known as Paul) swapped a bottle of rum with a fisherman, Mr "Dinks" Cooper, for the anchor standing on the forecourt, on the site of the original pub. This had been brought up in the fishing nets. The Anchor inn is one of a trio owned (1969) by Sole Bay Hotels (the other 2 being the Swan & Crown in Southwold)”. Photographs of this pub and more historical information about it can be found at suffolkcamra.co.uk/pubs/pub/983