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Date of photo: 1969
The Horse & Jockey was situated on Church End.
Sometime in the late 18th century the property now known as Oak Cottage became a public house as well as a family home and this was the first Horse and Jockey public house in the village. It would not have been a hostelry as we know it today but rather a home occupied by a farm labourer who also served beer in his non-farming hours. That situation would have lasted until approximately 1924 when the new Horse and Jockey was built on land which seems to have been part of the garden of the original. Village maps up to that date still show Oak Cottage as the Horse and Jockey Public House. In 1873 the house was connected to Long’s Brewery in Bedford and subsequently to Jarvis’s who were later acquired by Charles Wells. A previous owner of the cottage after it became a family home uncovered a considerable number of bowls and stems of smokers’ clay pipes and other public house type artefacts during some ground works within the house - suggesting that in its time it was a popular establishment.
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