The earliest reference that we have found to a beer shop at the edge of the village (on the site of what is now Wash Cottage) is the 1851 census, which lists the 53 year old William Saville as a beer retailer’, living with his 38 year old wife Mary-Ann. He appears again in the Kelly’s Directory of 1855, and again in the 1861 census. The next reference is in the census of 1871, when the retailer was George Johnson (57) who is shown living with his wife Elizabeth (56), together with their three sons Henry (36), George (17) and Samuel (13) nd a lodger John Purkis (47). The Johnsons’ beer shop is still operating 20 years later in 1891, with just George, Elizabeth and John Purkiss, and is listed again by Kelly’s in 1894.
What happens at this point is not clear. In the 1901 census, the Wash is occupied by Henry and Louisa Johnson and their 7 year old son Herbert: Henry’s occupation is listed as ‘horse keeper on farm’. However, in the 1902 Kelly’s Directory, Alfred Purkiss (possibly a relative of the former lodger John, although Purkiss is a frequently recurring Hempstead name) is listed as operating, again from The Wash.
This suggests that there was a permanent establishment at The Wash during at least the last 50 years of the nineteenth century. From the fact that the entry is quite different from those of the ‘Crown’ and the ‘Oak’, it seems likely that this was not an inn offering board and lodging, but a ‘jug and bottle’ establishment where one could buy beer to take home.
An ‘advertorial’ in the local press in 1996, when the property was advertised for sale, tells a slightly different story. This states: “it is reputed to have been sold in 1867 to a brewer and maltster who owned the Kedington Brewery. Known then as The Plough, it was bought by Greene King in 1887 and sold in 1906 with a covenant restricting its use as an alehouse.” This last point certainly chimes with the fact that the 1906 sale incorporated the house into the Church Army’s Hempstead Hall estate.