A week ago I visited The Eagle pub in Cambridge that is famous for its priceless historical ceiling.
The pub originally opened in 1667. A small back room is what is known as the RAF bar. During the dark days of WWII, the local countryside contained, on average, an airfield every eight miles. The pub became a favourite haunt of off duty RAF personnel eager to unwind from the stresses of the air war over Germany.
There is barely an inch of wall space that is not devoted to photographs of smiling, leather-jacketed airmen, standing in front of aeroplanes that took them out to the fiery battlefront. There are empty cans of Shell aviation fuel, pairs of flying boots, scribbled names of pilots and the planes they flew.
Memorabilia is everywhere. The most unique artifact, however, is the mottled amber ceiling, completely covered with graffiti. It is believed a British airman, Flight Sergeant P. E. Turner, was the first to ascend a table and burn his squadron’s number into the plaster. He soon was followed by scores more airmen who, using lighters, candles, and, in one case, a girlfriend’s lipstick, immortalized their squadron, plane, or initials onto the ceiling.
But as years passed the inscriptions faded and their origins were forgotten. By 1987 they were regarded by many as graffiti and meaningless squiggles. One day, a pub regular named James Chainey, spotted something on the ceiling above his head. With the landlord’s permission he cleaned the area and this led to his cleaning the whole ceiling. James then set about recording every inch of the ceiling and deciphering all the units: 64 RAF squadrons, the numbers or names of several RAF aircraft, and names, or references to, individual RAF personnel. They all are listed in a document, placed on one of the walls.
Today, the pub is both a museum to the aircrew, and a place to toast their courage. I was supposed to meet there for dinner with some people from Denmark who also traveled to the Duxford Battle of Britain air show. And it was one of them, Anders Straarup, the man behind the site https://www.airmen.dk/ who had told me about the Eagle RAF bar. Whilst waiting for them, I met pilots from Britain who happily told me some interesting stories about this place, and pilots from Norway with whom I had a drink.
We had a wonderful evening at the Eagle RAF pub. The food & drinks were good, and in such surroundings and a great company of like-minded people the time before the air show couldn’t be spent better.
*****
I used info from the following sites to write this blog post:
telegraph.co.uk/food-and-drink/pubs-and-bars/pint-to-pint-the-eagle-cambridge/
398th.org/PDF/Friends/Osborn/Osborn_A%20Famous%20Ceiling.pdf
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Eagle,_Cambridge
historynet.com/time-travel-yanks-in-cambridge.htm