8. No. 39 High Street

Hurlocks (now the Blue Boar)

The two photographs above shows Hurlocks in a poor state of repair just before demolition. The building was originally constructed in the 16th century but remodeled and refurbished in the 18th century. The photograph below is poor quality and from the 1930’s. However, it shows another view of the lookout on the roof from which Major Spitty, who died in 1896, was able to view the local farms which he owned and also monitor progress in digging out the lake on his land at Hill House Farm, later to become Lake Meadows.Old Photograph of Hurlocks

The building was used by the Army during the Second World War and on 23rd September 1940 a machine gunner in the lookout tower shot at and detonated a parachute mine in the air as it was drifting down, saving the High Street from major destruction. After the war the building was sold to the London Cooperative Society who built a large new store there in the late 1950’s.

Just before the turn of the 20th century in the late 1990’s the Co-op closed and the shop was converted into a pub by Whetherspoons and called the Blue Boar. A pub of the same name is reputed to have been sited where No. 49 is today and it was supposed to have had a large glass blue pig outside.

The Blue Boar in 2005 before the sign was painted black

Comments about this page

Add your own comment

  • That’s interesting, I’ve never heard of the Austin Somerset. My father had an Austin Westminster in the 1960’s (I think it was a 1956 model) and our neighbour had an Austin Cambridge at the same time. They live/d in Saffron Walk, just off Chantry Way. (I looked up the Somerset, that’s a very stylish car. Do you remember what colour it was? The Westminster was blue and the Cambridge was black. There was one other blue Austin Westminster in Billericay at the time. We got into it once at the Railway station after a day out, thinking we must have driven there in ours. Then we noticed it had a blue tinted stripe across the top of the windscreen and realized it was the other one. Those old keys must have all been nearly the same as each other.

    By Ann Heinson (02/06/2018)
  • When this building was the Co-op supermarket I did a Saturday job there stacking shelves in the late 60’s. That is where I met my wife who was doing the same. We married in 1972. The manager at the time was Mr Wise who lived just up the road from my parents in Chantry Way. My future father in law used his car, an Austin Somerset, to deliver customers’ groceries.

    By Terry Lockhart (11/07/2014)

Add a comment about this page

Your email address will not be published.