Hazells Histories – The Nutshell

The Nutshell, Traverse

Still widely accepted as the smallest public house in England because recent challengers, namely The Signal Box Inn at Cleethorpes and The Little Prince in Margate, were never meant to be pubs!

The diminutive Nutshell’s rightful claim dates from 1873 when the first landlord, John Stebbing Jnr. pulled the inaugural pint in what was then, a beerhouse. Grade II listed, The Nutshell has a single room on each of its three storeys, above a cellar is a tiny bar measuring just 15ft by 7ft, which once had players from the Bury Rugby Club crammed in, each supposedly holding a beer, though that’s a little hard to swallow!

One hundred matelots of H.M.S. Opossum were sardined in here in 1982 overcoming the rugger players number, but in 1984 the BBC Radio One Road Show triumphed and currently holds the record with just two more and a dog! The interior is somewhat strange, full of curios, stuffed animal heads, bank notes stuck to the ceiling and a mummified cat. Some of these were collected by John Stebbing Snr. who ran the adjacent greengrocers.

There are also two boards with the names of those who felt the full weight of the law in days gone-by. The last woman, no lady this, so listed to have been hanged in Bury at the Sicklesmere Road Gaol, was that of Catherine Foster in 1847 for poisoning her husband John, and George Carnt, the last man hanged in 1851 for murdering his lover, Elizabeth Bainbridge.

There is also a resident ghost, that of a young boy killed on the premises; his melancholic face supposedly seen on several occasions, but there is no record of any such murder. No money-spinner for its owners Greene King; it nevertheless is an obligatory place for tourists to have a small libation in, small being the operative word!

Hazells Histories are kindly provided by renowned local historian, Martyn Taylor.