Halloween Post - The Ostrich, Colnbrook

Getting into the spirit of Halloween, I figured I'd feature a pub that's purported to be one of the most haunted of the country.  

Some would say that tackling Slough and calling in to their Wetherspoon's is scary enough by itself.

After a pint in Spoons, I caught bus 81 for the 3-mile ride to Colnbrook.  This is a village, of a sort, with some 6,500 residents, but in reality it's been swallowed up by the urban expansion of Slough.  Seventeen miles from London, Colnbrook was once a stopping point on the coaching route from the capital to Bath, and it's to an historic coaching inn that I was headed.

Ostrich Inn (High Street, Colnbrook, SL3 0JZ - web) 
The Ostrich tends not to get mentioned in lists of oldest pubs, but it's said to date back to 1106, with the current, picturesque, timber-framed building being constructed in the 16th century.  

More attention is directed to the supposed gruesome past.
T'was a time when a fellow named Jarman was landlord of the pub and, along with his wife, came up with a wicked scheme to supplement their inn-keeping income.

Should a particularly wealthy traveler stay, they'd ply him with food and strong liqueur, before allocating the Blue Room.  Here the four poster bed was adapted so as to tip the unwitting comatose inhabitant through a trapdoor into a pot of boiling liquid, killing them instantly.  The Jarmans would nab all the valuables and dispose of the body in the nearby brook.

There are a couple of accounts of how the nefarious inn-keepers came to be caught.  One claims a victim hopped out of bed to use the chamber pot and, whilst doing so, was alarmed to see the bed tip-up. His shouts alerted fellow guests to the murderous scheme. 
Alternatively, the alarm was raised when a visitor called Cole was reported missing, having last been seen at the inn, leading searchers to discover his body in the local brook.
Bang-to-rights, Jarman was said to have boasting of killing 60 persons at the inn before he was hung.

The murders feature in a 16th century novel 'Thomas of Reading' by Thomas Deloney.
As the book appears to be fictional, it kinda suggests the story has created the legend around the pub and may not be entirely true.
I'd put in my own two-penneth-worth, by suggesting there would be much less troublesome ways of murdering your guests than undertaking the tricky carpentry work to create a tipping bed mechanism.

It's pretty much obligatory to have a ghost if you're one of the countries oldest pubs, let alone if there are such grisly tales attached to the premises.
Hence staff have told tales about feeling a presence in the cellar, a ghostly Victorian woman has been sighted, and one landlord recounted how "Strange noises, ghostly figures and objects moving by themselves are all in a days work if you re employed at the Ostrich Inn".

Decidedly un-spooky dining room.

I discovered an annual list of the UK's top 100 haunted places. 
The Ostrich Inn was No.66 in 2019, but has slipped down to No.80 in 2020. 
Who would have guessed there was such a ranking system, let alone the competitiveness between the spirits to maintain their annual place!

Other than the wineglasses and serviettes of the dining room pictured above, there is a outdoor patio to the rear and some casual tables around the bar, on which I plonked myself.

Appropriately for an old pub, beers came from Britain's oldest brewer, in the form of Shepherd Neame 'Spitfire' or 'Bishops Finger'.
With the sun shining through the windows, there was no sign of the ghost of the devilish Jarmon or his victims, leaving me to relax and enjoy a reasonable pint.

At the end of day, I do love an historic pub.  The more I read about the ghostly elements and tales attached to the Ostrich Inn, the more skeptical I became.  But these great old buildings and stories surrounding them (true or not) are one of the elements that make pubs great.