The Three Tuns or The Moon and Stars

Just round the corner from the Walker Street house in Eastwood, the Three Tuns pub still offers a warm welcome. It is a substantial building, apparently dating from an early stage in the town's growth, and has given its name to the lane running parallel to Nottingham Road.

This was Arthur Lawrence's local, and features in Sons and Lovers as 'The Moon and Stars', where Mr Morel helps out during the wakes in the first chapter, while Mrs Morel passes by, full of disapproval:

'As she crossed the open ground in front of the Moon and Stars she heard men shouting, and smelled the beer, and hurried a little, thinking her husband was probably in the bar.'

The wakes, or annual fair, was held on the large open space in front of the pub, now the car park. Lawrence also used this event in The White Peacock, where it is moved to Cossall (Cossethay in the novel), though clearly he is describing the Eastwood fair, and even uses the pub's real name:

The organ flared on – the husky woman came forward to make another appeal. Then there was a lull. The man with the lump on his chest had gone inside the rag to spar with the other fellow. The cocoanut man had gone to the “Three Tunns” in fury, and a brazen girl of seventeen or so was in charge of the nuts. The horses careered round, carrying two frightened boys.

Today the pub displays a collection of Lawrence photographs on the walls, and also provides a good selection of decent beers - Arthur Lawrence would certainly approve!

Where have all the cowslips gone?

In Sons and Lovers , one spring day Paul, Miriam and Clara go for a walk from Haggs Farm up the hill to High Park Wood:

They found at the top of the hill a hidden wild field, two sides of which were backed by the wood, the other sides by high loose hedges ... The field itself was coarse, and crowded with tall big cowslips that had never been cut ... It was like a roadstead crowded with tall fairy shipping.

Today it is easy to follow the track uphill from the Mill, but finding the 'wild field' is more difficult. The wood must have changed considerably in the past century, although the bluebells which Lawrence saw 'flowed over into the field' are still there. Yet I failed to find a single cowslip.

In the novel these flowers form the basis of a debate among the walkers about the morality of picking wild flowers. Clara argues against, while Paul and Miriam, in different ways, feel it doesn't matter. Illogically, I wondered if there was a connection between the fictional harvesting of the flowers and their disappearance today. Later I found a couple of clumps (pictured above) by the roadside on the track to Annesley, but in general they have become quite rare in this district.