Above postcard 1914, kindly sent by Rory Kehoe. Shown extreme left.

Above photo, circa 1923, kindly sent by Rory Kehoe.

Above shows the Lord Clyde 1925 with licensee Thomas Hilson and family at the door.

Above postcard circa 1904, kindly sent by Rory Kehoe.

Above photo kindly sent by licensee Paul White, 22 March 2010.

Above sign left, 2011 by Tony Wells, sign right, August 1992.

With thanks from Brian Curtis www.innsignsociety.com.

Above aluminium card issued June 1951. Sign series 3 number 20.

From "Inns of Kent"; Whitbread & Co. Ltd.; 1948.

Deal and Walmer are contiguous and there is little to choose between them. Both are graced with one of Henry VIII's charming but businesslike clover-leaf castles (that of Walmer is the official residence of the Lord Warden of the Cinque Ports), and both have played a great part in the medieval history of England. The sea fronts are architecturally enchanting, with every known period represented, but mainly Georgian and early Regency. The "Stag" at Walmer and The "Lord Clyde" are both good Regency houses within a few yards of one another, facing the sea, just waiting for history to turn another page. From without one catches the cheerful glint of a well-polished tap room, for quiet comfort is the keynote of them both. Only, at some time or another, The "Stag" has stolen a march on The "Lord Clyde" and has produced a neat little Regency balcony with canopy complete, which seems hardly fair.

From an Email received 1 January 2011

I am just researching family history and found in 1881 Census that my Great Great Grandfather William Thomas Bullen is listed as a Licensed Victualler for The Lord Clyde, Walmer Kent in 1881.

Photo of him shown below supplied by Ken Paul, his Great, Great Grandson.

Have sent for his will – had 70 pounds left to his son who is also listed as a Licensed Victualler in 1896 when he died. He was licensee from at least 1874 till at least 1891 when he retired, he died in 1896.

So will see if his son took it over when he died. His son, however, was licensee of the "Dolphin" from 1878 to 1908.

I am currently going through all other census years to see what/who was at the address 59 – 61 The Strand, Lord Clyde.

Regards, Marie Grech

Doubleview, Perth, Western Australia.

From the East Kent Mercury 16 August 1990.

SAYING CHEERS TO PHIL.

Phil Bailey has pulled his last pint at The "Clyde" in Walmer and left the pub after nearly eight years behind the bar.

Customers have been saying goodbye to Phil and his wife Cindy and a series of presentations were organised.

An official Royal Marines School of Music picture was handed over by regulars from the barracks, and staff from the National Westminster Bank, along The Strand, gave Phil an iced cake.

Above shows an advert that appeared in the Deal Mercury 2010

Above shows an advert that appeared in the Deal Gig Guide 2010.

Sign shows the information seen in the window, January 1st, 2011, both photos taken by Tony Wells.

From Porters Chartered Surveyors 1 January 2011

THE LORD CLYDE, 61 THE STRAND, WALMER, DEAL, KENT CT14 7DP

Freehold Guide Price: £220,000 PLUS VAT PLUS SAV

Prominent on Walmer Strand overlooking seafront. Easily managed, attractive one bar community public house with food potential. Single bar with central bar servery, trade kitchen, customer toilets, cellar. Three bedroom private accommodation plus lounge, kitchen and bathroom. Rear trade garden with covered smoking shelter.

Ref: PA451

From the http://www.bbc.co.uk By Soutik Biswas, 5 April 2018.

What a skull in an English pub says about India's 1857 mutiny.

The skull belonged to a 32-year-old Indian soldier who revolted against the British.

In 2014, while sitting in an office in London's Mile End, historian Kim Wagner received an email from a couple who said they owned a skull.

Dr Wagner, who teaches imperial history at Queen Mary University of London, says the couple told him they did not feel comfortable with the "thing" in their house, and did not know what to do with it.

The lower jaw of the skull was missing, the few remaining teeth were loose, and it had the "sepia hue of old age".

But what was remarkable was a detailed handwritten note in a neatly folded slip of paper inserted in an eye socket. The note told the brief story of the skull:

Skull of Havildar "Alum Bheg," 46th Regt. Bengal N. Infantry who was blown away from a gun, amongst several others of his Regt. He was a principal leader in the mutiny of 1857 & of a most ruffianly disposition. He took possession (at the head of a small party) of the road leading to the fort, to which place all the Europeans were hurrying for safety. His party surprised and killed Dr. Graham shooting him in his buggy by the side of his daughter. His next victim was the Rev. Mr. Hunter, a missionary, who was flying with his wife and daughters in the same direction. He murdered Mr Hunter, and his wife and daughters after being brutally treated were butchered by the road side.

Alum Bheg was about 32 years of age; 5 feet 7 ½ inches high and by no means an ill looking native.

The skull was brought home by Captain (AR) Costello (late Capt. 7th Drag. Guards), who was on duty when Alum Bheg was executed.

A handwritten note inserted in an eye socket told the brief story of the skull.

What was clear from the note was that the skull was of a rebel Indian soldier called Alum Bheg, who belonged to the Bengal Regiment and who was executed in 1858 by being blown from the mouth of a cannon in Sialkot (a town in Punjab province located in present-day Pakistan); and that a man who witnessed the execution brought the skull to England. The note is silent on why Bheg committed the alleged murders.

Native Hindu and Muslim soldiers, also known as sepoys, rebelled against the British East India Company in 1857 over fears that gun cartridges were greased with animal fat forbidden by their religions. The British ruled India for 200 years until the country's independence in 1947.

The couple in Essex had trawled the internet and failed to find anything about Bheg. They contacted Dr Wagner after they found his name as a historian who had authored a book on the Indian uprising, often referred to as the first war of independence.

'Grisly trophy'

On a wet November day, which was also his birthday, Dr Wagner met the couple. They told him that they had inherited the skull after one of their relatives took over a pub in Kent called the "Lord Clyde" in 1963, and found the skull stored under some old crates and boxes in a small room in the back of the building.

Nobody quite knows how the skull ended up in the pub. The local media had excitedly reported on the "nerve-shattering discovery" in 1963 and carried pictures of the new pub owners "proudly posing with the grisly trophy" before it was put up on display at the pub. When the owners died, it was finally passed on to their relatives who simply hid it away.

"And so it was I found myself standing in a small train station in Essex with a human skull in my bag. Not just any other skull but one directly related to a part of history that I write about and that I teach my students every year," says Dr Wagner.

What was very clear, he says, is that it was a "trophy skull, irrevocably linked to a narrative of violence".

But first Dr Wagner had to confirm that the skull matched the history outlined in the note, written by an unknown person. At London's Natural History Museum, an expert examined it and suggested that it dated back to the mid-19th Century; and that it definitely belonged to a male of Asian ancestry, who was possibly in his mid-30s.

The skull was discovered in a pub in Kent called the "Lord Clyde" in 1963.

There was no sign of violence, said the expert, which is not unusual in the case of execution by cannon, where the torso takes the full impact of the blast. The skull also bore cut marks from a tool, suggesting that the head was defleshed by being boiled or being left exposed to insects.

Dr Wagner says he did not believe immediately that it would be possible to find out very much more about Bheg.

Individual soldiers rarely left any traces in the colonial archives, with the possible exception of someone like Mangal Pandey, who fired the first shot at a British officer on 29 March 1857 on the outskirts of Kolkata and stirred up a wave of rebellion in India against the colonial power.

Bheg's name was not mentioned in any of the documents, reports, letters, memoirs and trial records from the period in the archives and libraries in India and UK. There were also no descendants demanding the return of the skull.

But there were a few helpful discoveries.

Dr Wagner found the letters of Bheg's alleged victims to their families. What proved crucial, he says, in piecing the story together were the letters and memoirs of an American missionary, Andrew Gordon, who lived in Sialkot during and after the uprising. He knew both Dr Graham and the Hunters - Bheg's victims - personally and he had attended the soldier's execution.

There was also a revealing report in the illustrated newspaper, The Sphere, in 1911 on a grisly exhibit in a museum in Whitehall:

The ghastly memento of the Indian Mutiny has, we are informed, just been placed in the museum of the Royal United Service Institution at Whitehall. It is a skull of a sepoy of the 49th Regiment of Bengal Infantry who was blown from the guns in 1858 with eighteen others. The skull has been converted into a cigar box as we see.

The newspaper said that "while we may be able to understand all the savagery of the terrible time - the cruelty of the natives and the cruel retribution that followed - is it not an outrage that a memento of our retribution, which in these days would not be tolerated for a moment, should be placed on exhibition in a great public institution?

Battling a famine of evidence, Dr Wagner began researching Bheg. He worked in the archives in London and Delhi, and travelled to Sialkot to locate the forgotten battlefield of the four-day Trimmu Ghat clash in July 1857 - during which the Sialkot rebels, including Bheg, were intercepted and defeated by General John Nicholson. The general was mortally wounded two months later leading the assault to recapture Delhi from the mutineers.

He relied on letters, petitions, proclamations and statements by rebels after the outbreak of the uprising, went through 19th Century newspaper databases and scanned books.

"It was only after I spent some time researching the story, in the UK and in India, that I managed to piece a historical narrative together and realised that there was a bigger story to tell," he told me.

'Detective novel'

The result is Wagner's new book, The Skull of Alum Bheg, a vivid page-turner on life and death in British India during the largest anti-colonial revolt of the 19th Century. Yasmin Khan, associate professor of history at the University of Oxford, says the book "reads like a detective novel and yet is also an important contribution to understanding British rule and the extent of colonial violence".

Dr Wagner writes that his book sets out to "restore some of the humanity and dignity that has been denied to Alum Bheg by telling the story of his life and death during one of the most dramatic episodes in the history of British India".

"I hope I have prepared the ground for Alum Bheg to finally find some peace, some 160 years late."

In Dr Wagner's telling, Alum Bheg - properly transliterated as Alim Beg - was a Sunni Muslim from northern India. The Bengal Regiment was raised in Cawnpore (now Kanpur) in today's Uttar Pradesh state, and it is likely that Bheg hailed from the region. Muslims made up around 20% of the largely Hindu regiments.

Bheg was responsible for a small detachment of soldiers, and had a gruelling routine, guarding the camp, carrying letters and working as a peon for higher officials of the regiment. After the revolt in July 1857, he appeared to have evaded the British troops until his capture and execution nearly a year later.

Resting place

Captain Costello, who was described as being present at the execution in the note, was established as Robert George Costello. Dr Wagner believes he is the man who brought the skull back to Britain. He was born in Ireland and sent to India in 1857, and retired from his commission 10 months later, boarded a steamer from India in October 1858, and reached Southampton a little more than a month later.

"The final aim of my research is to prepare for Bheg to be repatriated to India, if at all possible," Dr Wagner says.