The Cherry Tree

Under the 1830 Beer Houses Act any rate-paying householder could apply for a licence to sell beer and cider in his house on payment of a one-off fee of two guineas (roughly £200 in 2022 values). Such beer or cider was often home brewed and as their style and quality were so clearly linked to the licence holder, beer houses to start with tended not to have a name, unlike public houses and inns, but were known simply as, for example, Smith's Beer House with an entry in early trade directories as, John Smith beer retailer. It was not until a change in the licensing laws in 1869 that beer houses began to acquire permanent names and in some cases became linked to specific breweries. The former Cherry Tree was a beer house and stood immediately to the right of the entrance to Woodland Rise on Church Road. As the old photo taken in 1929 shows, the part of the property between the two chimney stacks was originally attached to a much older thatched part which has since been demolished and replaced by a more modern extension, but it is not clear whether both parts pre date the 1818 Enclosure Award when the a house on the site was owned by Francis Spruce.

The Tithe Apportionment Award of 1840 recorded the owner as being the Reverend Thomas Steward, with the property being let to William Oldman. The census return of the following year shows his occupation to have been a butcher, and living with him were his wife, Mary, and their two young children, John and Eliza, together with a servant girl called Charlotte Potter who was just ten years old. By 1851 the property was occupied by Benjamin Garrard and his family. He was described as a grocer and shoemaker employing three people, and White's Directory of 1854 says that he was also a beer seller. He had previously run a grocery shop on the main road.

The first reference to the name, The Cherry Tree, seems to have been in about 1880 when Abel Couzens is recorded as being a beer retailer at The Cherry Tree, but that wasn't his only occupation because Mr Couzens was also described at the time as a market gardener, with the land which went with the property at the time stretching almost as far back as Marl Bottom. Charles Tubby was recorded in the 1861 census as a beer house keeper at Shelton, but moved to Tasburgh shortly afterwards and Kelly's 1864 Directory records him as being a shopkeeper in Tasburgh, so he might well have sold beer as well. He died in1868 and the 1871 census records his widow, Mary Ann Tubby, as a shopkeeper. Kelly's 1875 Norfolk Directory lists her as a beer retailer, so again presumably operating as both a shop and a beer house, and she can definitely be linked to The Cherry Tree because Abel Couzens had married her daughter.

Mr Couzens continued running The Cherry Tree but when his licence came up for renewal in 1906, the magistrates in Long Stratton heard an objection based not on any complaint about the conduct of the business, which was selling over 400 gallons of cider a year, but on the population of Tasburgh no longer justifying four licensed premises, an argument no doubt put forward on behalf of The Bird in Hand! Census returns showed that the total number of residents including children had declined from 423 in 1881 to 368 in 1901. The magistrates referred the final decision to the Quarter Sessions but, at the Annual Licensing hearing in February 1907, renewal was refused, and the licence expired at the end of that month. Mr Abel Couzens remained in the house running his market garden, but that was the end of any sales of beer or cider.

The name Cherry Tree House was revived in the 1970s when the property underwent a major programme of restoration, but it is now known as Birch Grove.