Response to Plume of Feathers article
Local historian Jackie Gunn who writes for Luton Today has kindly responded to my questions regarding the postcard of a group standing outside the Plume of Feathers at 8 West Street, Dunstable.
She indicates that the soldier in uniform was William Gransden who fought in the Boer War as well as in World War One. He was a lodger at the public house and may have known Arthur Britnell, whose name appears as licensee on the postcard, through the military. Jackie notes that in 1918, Arthur’s wife Florence advertised for a housekeeper/domestic, requesting applicants apply to ‘Florence Britnell, Licensee’.
Arthur’s wife Florence had child in 1919 but, by 1920, he had become seriously ill, possibly from shell shock. In 1920, the ‘licensed victualler’ was sectioned as mentally disturbed. He spent the next 40 years in the Victorian Three Counties Hospital in Fairfield, Bedfordshire, renamed Fairfield Hospital in 1960, passing away there in 1961.
Florence and William appear to have had children in 1922 and 1923, born in Luton and Ireland respectively. Following the births, Florence left the Plume of Feathers and she and William moved to Tottenham, then in Middlesex, with their two daughters who bore the name of Gransden.
William died in 1929 after being found beside his delivery vehicle on the Dagnall Road in Edlesborough, Dunstable.
Lesley Dunlop