Past customers of Burnham-On-Sea’s former Ring O’ Bells pub are set to gather together for a big reunion this summer.
The pub in Oxford Street, pictured here, was built by traditional methods with no solid foundations – and it survived until it was inundated with water during Burnham-On-Sea’s 1981 winter storm and floods, when the sea wall was severely damaged.
The building was subsequently declared unsafe and demolished with the land becoming the bottom end of Lidl’s car park. A reunion is now being organised for people who drank, or were connected with the Ring O’ Bells during its heyday and until its demise in 1981.
Organiser David Holmes told Burnham-On-Sea.com this week: “The event will be a chance to meet up with friends who used to drink there and relive happy memories.”
“I’ve had the idea for years and kept putting it off until I went to a 60th birthday party at the end of last year and was reminded me that ‘a certain person was going to organise a reunion’. That was it… I said ‘right, it will happen next year’!”
“We are hoping to get between 50 and 100 people there. There’s already a Facebook page with over twenty confirmed attendees. Landlords of the time, Ian and Carol Robertson, will be coming along and made very welcome.”
The reunion event will take place on Saturday 5th August at the BASC ground building in Stoddens Road, Burnham-On-Sea and music on the night will provide a trip down memory lane.
‘The Ringers’ became the centre of Burnham’s music scene for many years after the closure of the folk club at the Fox and Goose pub on the A38 at Brent Knoll.
There was also a successful Ring O’ Bells football team, pictured below.
Mike Lang, another local helping to promote the event, recounts how the pub was below road level and that during periods of heavy rain, water occasionally would come up out of the drains, flooding the pub.
He says: “My Dad, returning home after a family drink with Grandad, made jokes about paddling out of the pub whilst carrying his shoes and socks.”
“There was a family shelter in the corner of the beer garden, where we, as children, used to sip our bottles of lemonade and search through bags of crisps for the little blue twists of salt bags. If we were lucky there were sometimes two or three.”
Tickets for the reunion may be reserved through the ‘Ringers Reunion’ Facebook Page, priced at £10 each, and paid for via a Paypal Account which has been set up just for this occasion. Any money left over will go to local charity.
Also requested are memories and memorabilia from over the years. These can be sent via Burnham-On-Sea.com here, Facebook, or emailed to Mike Lang at mike.lang@btinternet.com
Pictured: Top, the former Burnham-On-Sea pub (pic Dave Brooks), reunion organiser David Holmes (pic Mike Lang), and the football team – do you recognise who these players are?
