CAMPAIGN FOR REAL ALE

SOMERSET - Faulkland, Tucker’s Grave Inn

National Inventory of Historic Pub Interiors Part One

Wells Road, Faulkland, Radstock, BA3 5XF

(on A366)

Tel: 01373 834230

Listed Status: Grade II

View this pub on a local map

A three-roomed pub with no bar counter and a superb tap room. An 18th-century former cottage which has been a pub for over 200 years. The pub name comes from the burial place of a suicide, Edwin Tucker, who died in 1747. The two original delightfully unspoilt pub rooms with simple panelling and fixed bench seating are either side of a central corridor with ancient panelling. On the right is the tap room - note the Georgian lettering on the door which probably dates from the early 19th-century, if not the late 18th-century, and is surely the earliest pub lettering in the country. It survived because, at some point, it was covered by a screwed-on-sign. This small basic room has wall benches and the odd bell pushes. The mantelshelf over the old stone fireplace was replaced in 2007 when the original one caught fire and the room required re-painting as a result of smoke damage.

On the left of the corridor a latch door leads to the tiny public bar which has a genuine Victorian tiled fireplace, some old bar back shelving near the door and above the window but more modern shelving opposite. There is no bar counter - casks of beer and cider are stacked in the bay window which has external shutters to protect the barrels from the sun. A third room to the far left was formerly the living room and was brought into use in 1985 - it has a Victorian tiled fireplace with marble surround. At the end of the passage which gets very narrow is a door leading to the outside gents and ladies on the rear right of the building. There is a skittle alley in a separate stone building at the rear.