Regimental veterans buy historical pub

Veterans of The Staffordshire Regiment have acquired a 10-year lease to the Lichfield pub where their regiment was founded in 1705 for service in the War of the Spanish Succession.

The King’s Head today. A small plaque on the wall above the bench records the regiment’s founding in 1705.

The Staffordshire Regiment Association raised £64,000 in less than a fortnight to acquire a 10-year lease to The King’s Head in Lichfield.

As reported by the BBC, the purchase was the “mad idea” of an ex-warrant officer, Derek Watts, who also set up and led the fundraising campaign.

The pub in Bird Street is where the ex-members of the regiment hold their annual reunions and, as another former officer told the broadcaster, “we didn’t want it becoming a bed and breakfast or anything like that.”

In 1705 the pub was the site of the founding of a new regiment by Colonel Luke Lillingstone. A veteran of the Jacobite Wars in Ireland, Lillingstone had in fact commanded two regiments of foot before founding what became the Staffordshires in 1705 but it was only the third and final regiment that would survive.

As was common at the time, the regiment raised at The King’s Head initially bore the name of its colonel, and so was ‘Lillingstone’s Regiment of Foot’, the county association would come later.

British Army recruiting in the 18^th and 19^th centuries was heavily based around pubs. As ‘public houses’ they a centre point of local towns and villages and recruiting sergeants could be sure to find plenty of young local men there who might find themselves only

Colonel Luke Lillingstone who founded the regiment and who will have a new beer named after him in the pub. Painting in the collection of The Staffordshire Regimental Museum

too happy to take the King’s shilling – sober or otherwise.

The King’s Head is not the only pub with military links. Another good example is The Grenadier just off Belgrave Square in London, which was originally built as the officers’ mess of the First Foot Guards and became a pub, ‘The Guardsman’ in 1818.

Raised for service in the War of the Spanish Succession, Lillingstone’s regiment survived his death in 1713 and in 1751 was officially recorded in the Army Lists as the 38^th Regiment of Foot, with the title ‘1^st Staffordshire’ added in 1782 (the 64th Foot or ‘2nd Staffordshire’ having been formed in 1756).

As well as the Low Countries and Germany, the regiment campaigned in North America, the West Indies, Uruguay and Argentina (the little known invasions of Montevideo and Buenos Aires in 1807), the Peninsular War, Burma and the Crimea.

After further amalgamations in 1881 (with the Staffordshire Volunteers) and 1959 (with the North Staffords) – the last time it would be known as The Staffordshire Regiment – the regiment was amalgamated in 2007 with The Cheshires, Worcesters and [Sherwood] Foresters to form The Mercian Regiment, the headquarters of which are in Lichfield.

The King’s Head is currently undergoing a refurbishment but is due to open on 25 March this year – 312 years to the day of the regiment’s founding.

The pub will be managed by a former Stafford and two new ales have been brewed in honour of the regiment – ‘Colonel Lillingstone’ and ‘Watchman’ – the name of the regiment’s four mascots since the Second World War; all Staffordshire bull terriers, of course.

Read more: Historically Interesting Pubs