That's what my mum used to call "The Stanley" pub. I always presumed it was because it was full of Sods, ie husbands drinking their wages away. I later found out that King Edward(?) allegedly visited it once and referred to it as "The Sod House" but I presumed that someone had misheard him calling it a 'Sot (Drunkard) House'.
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I grew up in that area and well remember Throstle's Nest; I recall trailing up and down it on Sundays when my dad was in The Stanley getting pissed. We used to get a bottle of lemonade and a packet of crisps (complete with blue packet of salt) to keep us sat quietly on the doorstep.
Occasionally, we would disappear down the jiggers around there and end up at the back of the Atlas; the facade was still there but the back of it was a mass of bricks and rubbish. There were some square holes in the facade and we used to wait for people to go past and shout abuse at them then almost kill ourselves trying to get out of there just in case anyone took the trouble to come round looking for us
I think it was still an almost complete shell in the 1960s because the local toughnuts used to catch pigeons in there and use old camera shutters or something to behead them (or so they told us impressionable kids) but, at some point in the 1970s, they reduced it to rubble.
This is clearly what is missing from the lives of children today !
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