Elephant and Castle, Wood Walton, Cambridgeshire - Pictorial Pub Signs on Waymarking.com

The Elephant and Castle is a 150-year-old traditional pub building near Huntingdon, close to the A1 and A14. It features a Chinese restaurant and a wide range of beer and real ale.

Rooms at the Elephant and Castle are spacious, with en suite facilities, a fridge and a microwave. There is direct access from each bedroom to a large car park, which guests can use for free.

A traditional English breakfast is served in the morning, and the pub also features pool and darts facilities. Close to the Woodwalton Fen Project and surrounded by beautiful country walks, The Elephant and Castle is located in serene Cambridgeshire countryside, 25 miles from the historic city centre.


DETAILS OF ORIGIN OF NAME
It’s often asserted that the name is a corruption of Infanta de Castile, usually said to be a reference to Eleanor of Castile, the wife of Edward I (in Spain and Portugal, the infanta was the eldest daughter of the monarch without a claim to the throne). That would put Elephant and Castle in the same class of pub name as Goat and Compasses but, like the story of the way that name came into being, it’s almost certainly false.

Not the least of the problems is that Eleanor of Castile wasn’t an infanta (or at least wasn’t known as that — the term only appeared in English about 1600); the one infanta that the British have heard about from school history lessons is Maria, a daughter of Philip III of Spain, who was once controversially engaged to Charles I. But she had no connection with Castile. The form Infanta de Castile seems to be a conflation of vague memories of two Iberian royal women separated by 300 years.

The castle here is actually a howdah on the back of the elephant, in India a seat traditionally used by hunters. The public house called the Elephant and Castle was converted about 1760 from a smithy that had had the same name and sign. This had connections with the Cutlers’ Company, a London craft guild founded in the 13th century which represented workers who made knives, scissors, surgical instruments and the like. The guild used the same emblem. The link here is the Indian elephant ivory used for knife handles, in which the Cutlers’ Company dealt.

The real story here is actually rather more interesting than the one usually told, but a lot more British people have heard of an infanta from history lessons than know about the medieval emblem of a trade guild.

Date of first pub on site: 1860s Name of Artist: Not listed Date of current sign: Not listed

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