For the son of a dedicated teetotaller, pubs feature quite frequently in Lawrence's work. In his first novel, The White Peacock, the Ram Inn (above) was the home of Meg the barmaid, who George Saxton carts off (literally) to the Registry Office in Basford one fine morning. In describing the course of their courtship Lawrence provides an intriguing picture of pub life at the turn of the 20th century:
It was Saturday night, so the bar parlour of the Ram Inn was fairly full. … The men talked on the most peculiar subjects: there was a bitter discussion as to whether London is or is not a seaport – the matter was thrashed out with heat; then an embryo artist set the room ablaze by declaring there were only three colours, red, yellow and blue, and the rest were not colours, they were mixtures: this amounted almost to atheism and one man asked the artist to dare to declare that his own brown breeches were not a colour, which the artist did, and almost had a fight for it ...
(The White Peacock)
The Inn was on Dovecote Lane between Hill Top and Moorgreen. A new Ram Inn was later built on the other side of the road, though today named The Dovecote. The original pub is now a pair of houses, shown below:
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