cowes website

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Notes on old Cowes Pubs by Kevin Mitchell.
This little pub sat across the Medina River in East Cowes looking down the floating bridge slipway,
it was demolished and a modern public house put in its place around the 1960's. That building still exists
today and is now an amusement arcade. The following notes were written from memory by Maurice
William Moore who died on 8th June 1968 aged 79 years. He describes the locations of many long gone
Cowes pubs, however, the modern day locations he gives are themselves many years out of date. As this
website is developed, I am hoping to provide period photographs and modern site locations. Please bear
with me. This record is a learning experience for me as well. Kevin Mitchell August 2000

The above list is interesting, but I've tried to identify the pubs using the list in July 2000 and failed miserably. Cowes, being a pre-dominently tourist town, has small shops and outlets in the High Street which open for a season and then close. Each time they re-open they are repainted and renamed, making identification very difficult. A lot of the pubs listed by Maurice William Moore as demolished were actually bombed to bits by the Luftwaffe (German Air Force) on 4th and 5th May 1942. A Polish battleship was in Cowes for repairs, and had just been re-armed when the planes came over. The terrific barrage she put up drove the bombers away from J. Samuel White's Shipyard but unfortunately they were forced to drop their bombs on the rest of the town including a lot of the pubs which are mentioned. Below there's another list with a few anecdotal tales compiled by Ron Morris, a local Cowes historian.