One
of Nottingham’s newest pubs has been given a name from the past
and with good reason. When workmen were undertaking the conversion
on the former Barclays Bank at Hockley into a public house (a commendable
action, all banks should be converted into pubs), they found some
two hundred tankards with the name ‘Bunker's Hill’ etched
on them.
To commemorate this enjoyable find the new pub was named the Bunker's
Hill Inn with some of the booty displayed. But where was the original
house and from where did it get its unique name?
Bunker's
Hill was a small lane running parallel to and on the north side
of the then Parliament Row (now part of Lower Parliament Street).
Between the two roads was a narrow block of property, which
included the Bunker's Hill public house.
Now, whether the lane gave its name to the pub or vice versa
I do not know but the earliest record of the pub, in 1799, gives
its address as Parliament Row. By 1834 it has become 25 Bunker's
Hill only to be re-addressed as 23 Parliament Street by 1895.
The Bunker's Hill was one of the many public houses to disappear
with the building of the sadly demolished Nottingham Victoria
Station.
If the street
got its name first we must consider a couple of points. Those
of you who know the topography of the land between Milton Street
and Glasshouse Street will agree there are not many hills. So
the lane 'Bunker's Hill' does not appear to have been named
after a feature of landscape and anyway, who was Bunker?
Bunker Hill
was a battle during the siege of Boston in the American War
of Independence. The British realised the hill was strategically
useful and decided to move onto it.
They did not know the American rebels also had had this idea,
got there first and built a redoubt on it (the bunker of Bunker
Hill fame).
The 17th June 1775 saw the Redcoats storm the redoubt and after
three attempts it fell into British hands but with dreadful
cost; one thousand casualties to the British and four hundred
and fifty on the American side.
There has
been a long tradition of naming pubs after British successes
in war so this might explain Bunker’s Hill but somewhere
along the line Bunker has received the apostrophe S.
I no longer
live in Nottingham so research can give me difficulties therefore
I am, as ever, in debt to the Nottingham historian and writer
Terence White for his help and advice.
Mark Andrew Pardoe
|
