Launch of Volume 7 of Wisbech pubs books series completes the set

Fans of Andrew Ketley's popular and award-winning Wisbech Inns, Taverns, and Beer-houses series of books can meet the author and complete the set with Volume 7.

Pop into Wisbech Museum shop this Friday between 11am and 1pm and Andrew will be there to sign a copy for you.

The pictures and human stories – some funny, many scandalous, and a few tragic – of the 200-plus hostelries past and present Andrew has tracked down over twenty years of research won him Best Citizen Beer Communicator from the British Guild of Beer Writers in 2023, when Volume 5 came out.

Andrew volunteers as a guide at Wisbech Museum and is treasurer to the Friends of the Museum, who publish the series and donate the profits after publishing costs towards much-needed Museum running costs.

All seven volumes are now available for sale (1 and 2 cost £10 each, 3, 4, 5, 6 & 7 at £14) both online through the museum website and at the museum shop during opening hours from 10am to 4pm Wednesday to Saturday. (note the shop is not open after 1pm this Saturday, December 7, preparing for its free celebration event for Wisbech Christmas Fayre the next day).

You could also snap up the latest volume in its opening hours from the Community Hub in the Octavia Hill Birthplace House, South Brink.

Andrew said: “I'd go round the pubs as a youngster in the late Sixties when they were buzzing. I want to remember and celebrate them and have found that their story is a social history of Wisbech, with all its ups and downs.

“I'm proud to have traced the history of local hostelries going back more than 600 years and glad that quite a few people seem to be as fascinated by it as I am.”

On the front cover of this last of the alphabetical series, is Wisbech's newest pub The Magwitch in Hill Street, which is set to re-open permanently in time for Christmas.