A Weston by Welland road sign

At least it could still be found in that Northamptonshire village when I photographed it in 2013.

Wheel & Compass, Weston by Welland

This is the Wheel & Compass at Weston by Welland, which was one of the pubs taking party in the Welland Valley Beer Festival last week.

If you think the building looks a little top-heavy, there is a reason. As Unmitigated England once explained:

As you can see, it has a slightly odd upper storey that is obviously an addition. Originally this was a two storey ironstone pub with a thatched roof. But the arrival of surveyors in the adjoining fields in the mid-nineteenth century meant that life was to be as upturned as the Welland Valley pastures that surround it. An extra storey was added to the pub as a long dormitory for navvies working on the line.

And you will see from the photograph below, the lower two storeys were built in ironstone and the later one in brick.

Those navvies, incidentally, were building the Great Northern Railway and London & North Western Railway Joint Line for the contractors Logan & Hemingway.

That is Logan as in this blog's hero J.W. "Paddy" Logan, Liberal MP for Harborough. It was building the GNR & LNWR Joint that brought him to this part of the world in the first place.

Welland Valley Beer Festival

I have spent the day enjoying the Welland Valley Beer Festival - nine pubs, stretching from Great Bowden on the edge of Market Harborough to Lyddington in Rutland, served by a relay of vintage buses. How can you not enjoy that? The buses also call at Market Harborough station, so it is easy to reach it from further afield.

I visited the Talbot Inn at Gretton, the Wheel & Compass at Weston by Welland and the Queen's Head at Sutton Bassett. In between I found some things to photograph and even had a walk between those last two villages, though that is the shortest between participating pubs apart from the two in Lyddington,which really would have been cheating.

As to the beer, I rather liked Biggus Dickus from Nobby's Brewery at Guilsborough - and not just for the name. And I enjoyed listening to The Others at the Queen's Head.

Six of the Best 15

1. Prof. Paul Reynolds excoriates (hem, hem) Tory plans to introduce street cameras with number plate recognition software to North West Leicestershire.


2. Invaluable work from the Environmental Justice Foundation and Anti-Slavery International in exposing child labour in Uzbekistan is highlighted by Craig Murray.


3. Skipper argues that Alistair Darling has proved himself the real star of Brown's original cabinet.


4. On the Guardian Books Blog Alison Flood celebrates the 50th anniversary of the publication of The Weirdstone of Brisingamen - and Alan Garner's work in general. But why no mention of Elidor?


5. Unmitigated England explains why the Wheel & Compass in Weston by Welland has an ungainly third storey. It's a 19th century dormitory for railway navvies.


6. The lucky people of Seattle can look forward to a season of British film noir. Scarecrow Video has the programme and some Youtube clips.