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Picture source: Kevin Kaye
The Desert Rat was situated on Swinburn Road. This pub was demolished in November 2016.
The Desert Rat was opened in 1968 for the John Smiths brewery and named after the 7th Armoured Division of the British Army that saw distinguished active service during World War 2 where its exploits in the Western Desert Campaign gained it the Desert Rats nickname. Major F.R. Warwick, Managing Director of John Smith’s in the 1960s, served in North Africa himself, and said at the opening: “It is not our intention to glorify war, for war is never glorious… However, whilst war may bring out an individual’s characteristics it also brings out the best in men. Such as comradeship, courage and a sharpened sense of humour and nowhere was this more apparent than the Western Desert.“ The pub was decorated with Eighth Army shoulder flashes, fibreglass friezes depicting battle scenes, and official war photographs from the Imperial War Museum. The slightly weird look of the pub was actually pragmatic: it was built on the site of ‘an old dew pond’ and thus stood on piles, some of them sunk 15 metres deep.
Kevin Kaye (August 2021)
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Other Photos
Brian and Susan Wilkinson, first publicans in 1968	Picture source: Kevin Kaye