The Bird in Hand / The Countryman 

 Ipswich Road

The name, Bird in Hand, is a reference to the medieval practice or sport of falconry. It is impossible to know whether there has been a hostelry on this site since medieval times but there has been one since the 1500s and being sited at the top of the hill above the "deep wade" would have been well placed to serve travellers. Nevertheless an inventory from 1748 hardly gives a picture of prosperity. The parlour contained a fireplace, five chairs, three stools and a table. In the kitchen there was another fireplace, nine chairs, a table and a dresser with eighteen pewter plates and five dishes. There was also a separate drinking room without a fire and just a table and eight chairs. In the stables were an apple trough, mill and cider press, so there must have been an orchard close by.

Although the back part of the building is older, the three storey part fronting the road is thought to have been built in the 18th century, with the top floor enabling a watch to be kept up and down the road for approaching coaches requiring a quick change of horses. By the beginning of the 1800s, improvements to the roads, brought about by turnpikes, led to increased passing trade, with daily mail and other coaches travelling from Norwich down to London, as well as more local traffic. Business became sufficiently profitable for The Bird in Hand, by then known by that name, to be bought by Weston's Brewery based in St George's, Norwich. In 1822, one of their tenants, James Reeve, was jailed for a year for encouraging rioters who destroyed a machine at Woodton – farmworker protests over the introduction of advances such as the new seed drills were widespread in Norfolk around that time.

In 1840 the Tithe Apportionment recorded William Moore as Weston's tenant, and the census return for the following year reveals that the pub must have provided some basic accommodation, probably above the stables, because in addition to Mr Moore and his family with their two servants, the census lists six drovers and six agricultural labourers, no doubt stopping overnight with their cattle on the way to market in Norwich. In 1866, Charles Weston died, and the brewery, together with 40 pubs, including The Bird in Hand, was sold by auction as a single lot to Norwich brewers Youngs, Crawshay and Youngs. By then, the opening of the railway in 1849 had removed much of the passing trade, as evidenced by the demand for hay, to feed customers' horses, which dropped from 50 tons a year down to just 17 tons.

In 1869 the tenant, Raynor Knights, was fined £2 with 12 shillings costs (about £250 in total by 2022 values) for permitting drunkenness in the house and, the following year his wife Charlotte charged a local farmer, Thomas Garrood, with an assault but the case was dismissed, and she had to pay the costs. All in all, it sounds as if The Bird in Hand didn't have the best of reputations at that time, and as further proof of the decline in passing trade, the 1871 census return refers to two dwellings in the Bird in Hand yard, no doubt making use of redundant buildings.

William Moore in his memories of life in Tasburgh during the 1940s and 50s, not only mentioned that the landlord, Dick Moore, was a relative, but that outside in the yard some of the buildings was being used as a slaughter house and butchers premises and that there were still sleeping quarters above the old horse stables. He also recorded that during the War an annexe was used as the base for the home guard in the village. Youngs, Crawshay and Youngs, who owned the premises for 90 years, were known not just for the quality of their beers but also the quality of their pub signs, a good example of which can be seen in the picture of the pub from the Norfolk Pubs website taken in 1955, when Frederick Rayner took on the tenancy. The following year, the brewery was bought by another Norwich brewer, and The Bird in Hand became a Bullards' pub but they in turn were taken over by Watney Mann in 1963. By 1970 Watneys had also acquired the other big Norwich brewer, Steward and Patteson, and set about rationalising its holdings with The Bird in Hand closing in 1971. It was auctioned off three years later.

Fortunately that was not the end of the story as following refurbishment the property re-opened as a free house under the name of The Countryman.