The Yorkshire Grey Robinsbridge Road.
The lady on the right of the door is Sarah Ann, second wife of the landlord Edgar Pennick and on the left is Eva May, Edgar's daughter by his first wife Louisa who had died in 1900. In front of Eva is one of Edgar and Sarah's daughters, Ada, the other one, also with a white hat and to the left of the pump is Mary.
Eva was engaged to a Bob MacMillan in Coggeshall, but she contracted rheumatic fever and died in early 1913 aged just 26.
The Yorkshire Grey and the nearby cottages including a bakehouse was built as a public house in 1839. It was offered for sale in that year as 'newly built' together the cottages and a silk mill for 50 looms in Church Street - so all may have been built to house silk workers. It was probably bought by the Stoneham Street Brewery, later William Bright & Sons. Its name derives from the Yorkshire Grey horse, a breed often used to pull brewery drays.
The Pennicks took over the pub in 1905 and held the licence for 34 years. Before WW1 the trade was 208 barrels, 685 pints and 54 gallons of whisky and many of the bedrooms were occupied by lodgers. The pub also served teas, evident in this report of a bus tour of Essex in 1913; '.... and on to Coggeshall, where the party alighted at the Yorkshire Grey for tea. While at tea the children of the village invaded the bus inside and out, and before the journey could be resumed the genial driver had to give them a ride round the village, piloted by the hostess of the Yorkshire Grey, with a baby in her arms.'
In 1914-15 seven soldiers from the Royal Warwicks were billeted at the pub - they must have thought they had died and gone to heaven!
There was a stable and a blacksmiths shop at the pub - the landlord Edgar Pennick, worked in his spare time as a blacksmith - but there surely could not have been much of that, as in 1919 he had served an extraordinary total of 3,700 meals to visitors. These figures emerged In 1920 when the magistrates had a mind to close both The Yorkshire Grey and the Foresters (just down the road). They deferred the relicensing and asked for reports on the trade of both. The owners (Bright's and Gardner's breweries) mounted a stout defence and afterwards both licenses were renewed. When they retired in 1939 Edgar and Sarah Ann, Eliza and Mary all moved to Berkley Cottage, right at the top of Tilkey Road.
The Yorkshire Grey finally closed its doors in November 1993.

In the distance you can just see the chimneys of Squirrels Hall, now cut off on the other side of the by-pass.
Thanks to Si Magee, Bob Norfolk, Julia Fletcher, Hazel Lowe, Suzy Biggs, Simon Morse and Lesa Osbourne for pinning down the date of closure.

Go to the next photo for an close-up of the pub and pump.
Courtesy Douglas Judd.
Date: c1910
Ref: 101/43


The photo before restoration