Waggon And Horses

A Memory of Hayes.

Sadly The Waggon and Horses has been demolished. Controversy surrounds the old water pump which was outside and which mysteriously disappeared. The Waggon was my local for many years. I brought up in Berwick Avenue (from 1967, aged about 18 months) less than half a mile away from the Waggon. I remember my dad taking out to the Waggon, I'd either sit in his car or wheather permitting in the beer garden with a packet of crisps and a soft drink of some kind! I longed to be able to go inside and sure enough the day came! And so it became my true local and for my mates too, we'd often start our nights out with a couple in The Waggon. Alcohol blurs the memory but I recall a blinding Christmas in there. They used to have a DJ (Dennis Duncan I think?!) who had very poor eyesight and couldn't see what he was playing. I popped in for a quiet drink one night and ended up getting hammered on whiskey chasers with the parent of a student I'd escorted around Barnhill Secondary School. I worked in The Royal Standard Pub in Coldharbour Lane for about 6 months in the summer of '83. Six months later later the landlord and landlady of The Standard took over at the Waggon.
The Waggon and Horses featured heavily as big landmark in my life as a child and as the pivitol point of of my social life in my late teens and early 20s. I must admit I shed a tear when I saw they had pulled it down.