A Pint, a Fire and a Ghost

Well, it’s only September but I’m ready to swap a pint in a sunny beer garden for a glass of nose-clearingly strong spirit by a crackling fireplace. I go to pubs a lot less than I used to so when I do go, I want it to be a nice one. A great bad weather pub conveniently close to my flat is Ye Olde Black Boy in Hull’s Old Town. It’s one of my favourites because it’s small and cosy yet full of life. You can tell that it’s very old, the drink selection is awesome and on cold days there’s still a real fire warming up the smoking room (don’t let the name fool you - the English were thankfully very thorough with their implementation of the smoking ban).

The Smoking Room

You enter the pub through an inconspicuous looking, dark door and find yourself in a short stone corridor. The first door on your right takes you to the small front/smoking room and to the pool table upstairs. The door at the end of the corridor leads to a bigger and often slightly livelier back room. Smoking room and back room are both linked by the fixed pivotal point: the bar. All rooms are darkly panelled and posters and old newspaper articles hang on the rather thick walls (I never have a decent phone signal in these old pubs). You choose between sitting on wooden leather-cushioned benches or footstools. Along the top of the wall a black shelf runs around the perimeter of the room. On it stand a large variety of bottles and when it gets darker outside fairy lights bathe the whole scene in a warm light.

There have been houses in the Black Boy’s location as early as the 14th century but it wasn’t until the 1720s when William Smith purchased the building that its transformation into a public house started being documented. Smith originally opened it as a pipe shop. At one point, the Black Boy was a brothel and it took until the 1930s for it to become a pub as we know it today. The origin of the name Ye Olde Black Boy is not entirely clear. Some claim that it refers to the look of a chimney sweep, others say it was named after a Moroccan boy who worked there in the 1730s, when the building was a coffee shop. Some even claim the name was inspired by King Charles II (1630-1685), who had a rather swarthy complexion and was also known as the black boy king of England.

Slavery abolitionist William Wilberforce (1759-1833) and poet Philip Larkin (1922-1985) were both known to regularly frequent the premises. But the pub also has a reputation for getting slightly less worldly visitors. It is said to be haunted with bottles inexplicably flying off shelves and apparitional hands reaching out through the wall panels.

I ain't afraid of no ghost! And looking out now into the cold, windy greyness taking my chances with a ghost to sit by a crackling fire over a warm glass of mulled cider sounds like a risk worth taking.