Blue Lighthouse, Southwold

Nags Head taken down 08 Jul 1855 & rebuilt by 22 May 1856. Sign altered to Star & afterwards Victoria Tavern. A paperback book published in 1969, called "Inns of the Suffolk Coast" by Leonard P Thompson contains the following extract: “Its former name, the Pilot Boat, is commemorated in a nineteenth century rhyme The Lion bit the Bear And made the Old Swan fly Turned the Pilot Boat upside down And drank the Lord Nelson dry. The Bear Inn disappeared over one hundred years ago (1869). In 1844, James Woodward was at the Pilot Boat & he remained for a number of years. By 1874, when George Ellis Wright was running the inn, it had changed its sign to become one of only 3 Victoria Inns listed in White's Suffolk Directory for that year, the others being at Felixstowe Ferry & Thurston, near Bury St Edmunds. Mr C.E.Trigg is the present (1969) licensee of this small comfortable licensed hotel with letting rooms, which was modernised about 8 years ago. For many years it was in the ownership of Bullard & Sons, Anchor Brewery, Norwich, now part of Watney Mann.”