No . 138
The Trusty Servant
A puzzle worthy of Sherlock Holmes :
The Trusty Servant at Minstead
Anthony Cheke ( Coll , 59-62 ) makes an unexpected discovery when seeking lunch in the New Forest :
In College in the early 1960s , I was aware of the enigmatic ‘ Trusty Servant ’ painting in the dim corridor leading to the kitchens , but it rarely impinged on my consciousness , and of course we are regularly reminded of it by the logo on this regular eponymous newsletter . But what on earth is this image doing on a pub sign in the New Forest ?
After a morning ’ s birdwatching in July 2024 on Acres Down north of Lyndhurst , my wife and I proceeded for lunch to the nearest pub , the Trusty Servant in Minstead , discovered online . While a little intrigued by the name , I was a lot more surprised to find the pub sign was a direct copy of the Wiccamical icon , complete with the College crest and explanatory verse underneath . Inside the pub there were a couple of further images , but no information as to how , why or when the pub was so named . The person behind the bar volunteered that they had heard that perhaps the original reliable employee had come from Minstead .
Cue an internet search - more speculation ( including on the village ’ s and the pub ’ s own websites ), but few verifiable facts . There are claims that the college once owned land in Minstead , or that it built the pub , that there was a connection between King George III ’ s visit to the College in 1778 and his visit to Minstead in 1789 , that the pub dates from 1896 or 1890 , etc , too many to list . Most egregious was the comment in Hampshire Life magazine on 22 August 2017 that « the ‘ Trusty Servant ’ pub unfortunately hasn ’ t retained its original sign , which is in Winchester College ”! - the author of this calumny wisely remained anonymous .
Next step - contact the College archivist , Suzanne Foster , who said , ‘ this question comes up every couple of years and I ’ m afraid that none of us have ever made a connection between the pub and Win Coll . We know about the connection between the Trusty Servant and Win Coll , but that ’ s about all ’. However she was kindly able to produce a letter from R . Howe , Estates Officer of the brewery company Whitbread in March 1981 , in response to a query from Paul Yeats- Edwards , then Fellows ’ Librarian . Mr Howe was unable to help very much , but did report that they had a deed for the property from 1621 , that in 1787 the pub , apparently established only two years earlier , was known as the “ Compasses ”, and that the first mention of it as the “ Trusty Servant ” was in 1837 . Nothing on why or exactly when the name was changed . So much for an 1890s date ! Ms Foster also confirmed that the college had never owned land in Minstead , the nearest being at Cadnam - so another myth scotched .
While a few facts had emerged , the nub of the matter remained obscure . So , off to the literature . There ’ s a whole book by an American antiquary on the history of the medieval hircocervus imagery from which the Trusty Servant derives ( Secord 2021 ), but Minstead only rates a poor reproduction of a postcard of the inn sign , no history . The late Queen ’ s 1977 jubilee prompted a history of Minstead by G . I . MacFarquhar ( 1977 ), who wrote that ‘ there has always been an inn on the village green . There is a print of The Trusty Servant dated 1810 and it looks much the same as it does today . The original of the sign is in Winchester College . It was copied by a travelling artist and sold to the landlord who decided it would make a good inn sign ’.
An article in the Inn Sign Society Journal in 1994 , noting the recent repainting of the sign , and drawing from “ a very old edition of Southern Life sent to me by Valerie Horn ” claimed that “ the pub was originally the Three Compasses and only became the Trusty Servant in 1880 . The sign ( showing an animal in Windsor uniform ) is based on a painting by William Cave in Winchester College but that is thought to be based on a 16th century wall painting by John Hoskyns who was a former scholar of the College . The ‘ ideal attributes ’ of a trusty servant have been traced back to the 13th century and were first published in France in 1499 . The Windsor uniform is said to derive from the fact that George III visited the College in 1778 . The painting became famous and appeared on many Trade souvenirs last century ( the 19th ) and perhaps it was one of these traders who decided to name the pub and use the painting as the sign .”
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