Pubs, Polo, Pirates or Knights – Tom Jones and The Crown and Anchor
Anyone who has visited Shoreham will have noticed the prominent pirate figurehead mounted high on the Crown and Anchor. As a youth I used to always drive down to Brighton along the more interesting seafront route long before the bypass, and that pirate was one of the curious milestones along with the junior Battersea power station, rows of coloured beach houses and dilapidated pier. It was an unbelievable surprise for me to find out 30 years later, after living in Brighton for a decade then Australia for two, that it was a long-lost relative who originally put it there. While researching the origins of my orphaned grandfather, I pieced together an amazingly colourful detailed story from the late nineteenth century which, on reflection, ends at the Crown below that pirate and various signs above the door and on even the roof reading “Tom Jones“
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Tom was born in 1859 to a family of blacksmiths in Birmingham who can be traced into the C18th working hard as farriers, shoeing smiths and a veterinary surgeon amongst the gunsmiths, metal workers and jewellers around Snow Hill and Aston. They had the Snow Hill Forge on the canal bridge near Clive Passage, later Little Charles St, and Lionel Street and the huge family lived round the back in the notorious cramped courts. Tom and his younger brother Alfred (my great grandfather) broke with tradition and didn’t continue their trade as blacksmiths, but rather seemed to climb on the horses and seek their fortunes in London.
Tom is reported to have travelled to South America where he trained as a jockey, then on his return h became a polo player of some repute. In 1889 he took over a polo stable next to the cavalry barracks in Ordnance Road in St. John’s Wood just north of Regent’s Park, from Frank J Balfour the son of an industrialist who moved to Buenos Aires, Argentina and bred polo ponies for export. Tom took over Frank’s advertisement woodcut of a polo player brandishing his mallet on a pony, which would come to be Tom’s enduring “logo” for over two decades advertising horses, stables, livery, polo training right up to his Shoreham pubs where he ran a range of tourist activities. Tom later visited Argentina around 1893 and wrote letters to the local expat magazine River Plate Sport and Pastime magazine edited by Balfour and owned by Mr Ravenscroft, discussing “Saddles and Seats” in praise of the local “gauchos” distinct riding style.
Tom married Eliza Picton in 1890 at St. Martin in the Fields near Trafalgar Square, which was a popular destination for a special wedding. Their address in the parish register was
“100 Strand” which seems to be the Savoy Hotel starting a trend where they spent their remaining life living in hotels and pubs. Eliza also came to enjoy the life of riding, showing and breeding horses and bulldogs, and running entertainments for sports events as they transitioned from players to publicans. Eliza’s family had simple origins in Essex, but it’s likely Tom’s later apparent flair for running sporting pubs was originally inspired by her. She had previously married Joseph Picton who ran several pubs in Chelsea including The Cock
Tavern, off Sloane St and the Magpie and Stump, Cheyne Walk which he used for the base of the Middlesex rowing club and his racing pigeon breeders club. He was noted in the papers for giving out great prizes to the winners at the pub afterwards, presumably bringing in a lot of business and fun.
Joseph’s brother was Arthur Picton who was also a publican in Paris (they had a French mother). He took over a bar in Rue Scribe called the Cosmopolitan, which he renamed The Silver Grill and turned it into an American style sports bar which would host post-fight events for famous “pugilists” One time champion John L Sullivan attacked one of his waiters and Arthur wrote to the wonderfully tacky “New York Police Gazette” in the US in complaint. Later the bar was drawn by Toulouse Lautrec in his famous style in “At the Bar Picton, Rue Scribe”
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Tom around this time was a member of Belsize Boxing club run by Peggy Bettinson (“the Guvnor” who started the National Sporting Club), BJ Angle, Val Barker and others who were frequently mentioned in the newspaper reports of their great annual feasts where songs would be sung and many toasts made, all meticulously documented by an attendant journalist. Another member was Clarence Hailey, who became well known as a pioneering artist and photographer of horses and actually lived upstairs from Tom in Ordnance Road in 1891. Clarence took the only known photo of the entire boxing club, and Tom is somewhere there amongst the 50 or so gentlemen pictured a real puzzle. Tom was also friends with Peter Jackson, the Australian boxing champion who visited England to fight Britain’s Frank Slavin with newspaper reports of Tom even meeting him off the train, more feasting and singing and then waving him off goodbye months later. Curiously the US champion Sullivan (who attacked Tom’s brother-in-law’s waiter in Paris) refused to fight Jackson due to his colour, and some fans were suspicious this was just an excuse. Tom appears to have engaged in an exchange of letters to the Australian Sportsman arguing the matter with a local in defence of his friend Jackson. Tom was also playing polo for the “Junior Polo Club” with their ground in Kilburn and the Middlesex club, with Frank Balfour, Mr Ravenscroft, Major Savage and other friends who would go on to become serious polo players. Unfortunately in 1890 in one match a horse kick broke Tom’s leg, and Frank took him to the hospital in Paddington while the others played on. It seems after this point that Tom shifted to providing their horses and running stables and polo training, perhaps due to this injury ending his playing career.
He ran hotel livery stables in several locations in London all with corresponding adverts in the
newspapers, sometimes featuring specific horses but always with his name and polo pony logo which became a brand in itself. He ran The Feathers in Oxford street, the Bricklayers Arms in South Moulton Street, the Burlington Arms Piccadilly and then around 1894 moved to Barnes to run the Red Lion next to the Ranelagh polo club entrance. This was around the height of the polo sport’s popularity boom in London when the prestigious Hurlingham club had outgrown its grounds across the water in Fulham, so the Ranelagh club was founded in Barn Elms where the wetland reserve and sports centre is now, as a successor, extension or competitor to Hurlingham (opinions differ). Alf worked with Tom in Barnes too, helping run the polo stables which served as an overflow for the Ranelagh Club’s own accommodation, as was noted in
“The Game of Polo” by T.F. Dale 1897. Alf would train and care for the ponies keeping them fit during the season in their specially equipped fields. He would also examine horses being traded and determine if they were “players” or more suitable for other activities like “hacking” or “driving”.
The social entertainment continued, indeed peaked during the polo era in Barnes. There are many more fun newspaper stories of Tom, Eliza and Alf attending or hosting parties, feasts, competitions or funerals both at the Red Lion or other pubs or just in the streets. They
staged impromptu horse races up the main road, paraded raucously till dawn after
“the surrender of Pretoria” in the Boer War, hosted cheese-bowls, and marched en-masse from from Wandsworth to Brompton in respect for the late landlord of the Bull’s Head.
In 1903 there was one, particularly poignant end-of-season feast at which “the polo boys” seemed to realise it was drawing to a close. Songs were sung, Alf played the coach horn, Tom told a story of his house getting flooded by the Thames with toasts into the night. The polo boom had finally died down, and it was time to move on.
Tom did move on to Shoreham but he brought his sporting spirit intact. He and Eliza took over the Royal George, an old Tudor hotel next to the town hall, later demolished in the 1930s to straighten the road. He renovated it “in tip-top style quite up to date”, installing billiards tables, setting up his livery stables and a new motor garage with some of those early curious looking cars which appeared rather cheekily parked on the town hall frontage. He adorned the hotel with his name above the door, on the roof, on hanging shields and signs, and began posting adverts in the local newspapers with his familiar polo player logo and his ex-Ranelagh club credentials. He ran tourist activities on the beach, boating, horse riding and apparently was a fun host with many a story to tell.
It’s incredibly fortunate that there is a photo of the Royal George which captures this moment, with his name emblazoned over the building, next to a mounted figurehead of the knight St. George, perhaps the distant namesake of the pub. Around this time Eliza and Tom continued to breed and show horses and bulldogs, host events and soon made many friends in the local area. Eliza’s show horse was called Royal George which was probably a continuation of her network marketing savvy. She had miniature bulldogs called Miss Polo, Highgate Dot, and Barnes Dot, which had pedigree but were too fat to qualify.
Tom became friends with Captain William Bareham, who perhaps assisted with his tourist boating trips. He was well known in Shoreham and in the 1980’s a newspaper article reported a visit by his granddaughter Daphne Vera Rosalind Pike who was named after the yacht Rosalind he captained a model of which can be found in Marlipins museum. She mentioned that Captain Bareham was friends with Tom Jones of the Crown and Anchor and showed them a photo of the pair together. Unfortunately the newspaper seems to have cropped Tom off, only showing his elbow! This doesn’t help much to narrow down his only other “where’s tommy” appearance in the Belsize Boxing Club photo. In 1907 Tom and Eliza moved up to the Crown and Anchor, where they would continue their business for another 7 years until his death.
When he moved pubs he brought all his livery with him adorning the roof and signage of the Crown with his name again, including not only a new metal roof sign and same black shield above the door but also he moved the St. George knight statue! This can be seen again in
a fortunate photo of around this era on what seems to be a large flagpole or mast. Tom and Eliza continued to entertain local people and visitors, and decorated the pub inside with photos of dogs and horses plus his talking parrot to welcome the guests. It’s not clear how legal this move would have been considering the St. George was perhaps originally part of the Royal George hotel, if not added by Tom during his renovation in 1903. Perhaps the new owner of the George told him to get rid of all his tasteful decorations, or perhaps the tradesmen assigned to the task assumed it was moving too and took it by accident, or perhaps it was Eliza’s idea to continue their established brand-awareness we will probably never know.
Written by Pip Jones 2026
