Frequently asked questions

1. I'm using Internet Explorer 6 or another old browser and your site looks a mess. Why?
   
   The Web has moved on a long way in the decade or so since IE6 was launched. Unfortunately that browser was well behind the standards of even that time; today it simply isn't up to the job of rendering the sort of rich content sites like this contain. It's also incredibly insecure. So sorry, we don't have the time or resources to design the site so it can support IE6. We recommend that if possible you upgrade to a more modern browser, such as Firefox or even Internet Explorer 8.
2. Why do some places' list of pubs show up as drop-down menus, while others are just plain text links?
   
   Where the location has only a few pubs, we just put them on the page as text links, as there's no point in having drop-downs in this situation. However, when any classification has more, we use drop-down menus instead.
3. Why list all those old pubs? Surely it's only the open ones that are of interest?
   
   The open pubs are the most important ones for us; and part of the reason for this website is so that people can find them, use them and keep them open. But the pub heritage of Suffolk is something that's important to us and we want to get it publicly documented while people still remember about the old pubs. The historical side of this site is connected with a project being organised by Ady Smith, of the Dove Street Inn, Ipswich to get people together to share their memories and make them available online.
4. Why are there so many "Unidentified" or "possible" pubs?
   
   The problem with a historical research project like this is that we don't always have all the information we need to identify a particular pub. Sometimes this is because a building that was obviously once a pub has been found while our researchers were travelling around the county; other times because an old map shows an inn in a particular location. Sometimes we can make a reasonable guess as to the identity of the pub concerned (perhaps because we have a single closed pub listed for that village, so there's a good chance that's the one) but otherwise we show what we have so far (location and, if we have one, photograph) in the hope that someone may be able to identify it. In some places, we have names for several old pubs but no addresses; we've also found several pubs there on old maps, but currently don't know which is which.
   Generally speaking, if we know a building was a pub but don't know its name, we mark it as "unidentified". If we think a building might have been a pub, we mark it as a "possible old pub". We set a fairly low probability threshold for buildings that look like ex-pubs. This means a lot of these were probably never pubs but it also means we'll miss fewer actual ex-pubs. That way, there's more chance someone might see a photo and remember the pub (and with luck, someone may also know for certain that a building was never a pub).
   
5. I'd like to make use of some of the information on this website for my own website/book/etc. Is that OK?
   
   Part of our reason for being here is to promote pubs, so general information, such as pub names, addresses, etc. may be used freely providing you acknowledge us as an information source. Most photographs are copyright (and marked as such) and may not be used without the express permission of the copyright holder. Similarly, the text of the site is copyright and may not be reproduced without our express permission.
6. I know a particular pub used to exist in a particular place, but you don't have an entry for it. Why is is missing?
   
   The most likely explanation is that it's a pub we've never found a reference to. Our best guess is that we've managed to list something like 95% of all the pubs that have existed in Suffolk over the past couple of centuries, but that leaves plenty for us to find. If you know about a pub we don't mention, please let us know about it so we can add it.
   Another possibility is that the pub wasn't actually in that particular place.There are two particular situations where this may happen:

   1. Sometimes a pub is generally referred to as being in one parish when it's actually over the border of another one. An example of this is the Fox in Willingham St Mary, which is often referred to as being in neighbouring Shadingfield.
   2. In a number of instances, boundary changes have resulted in a pub now being in a different parish to the one where it has been historically listed. An example of this is the White Horse in Risby. At one time (certainly before the 1890s) this pub was within the boundaries of Great Saxham and is frequently listed under that parish name. However, due to boundary changes, it's now in Risby, so that's where we list it.

   Where we are aware of pubs in these situations, we try to make it clear in both the pub's entry and that of the parish it used to be in. It's quite probable that we still have a number of pubs listed in more than one place due to boundary moves that we haven't yet identified.
7. I've found a problem with the website. What should I do?
   
   If you've found an error in some of the information, or have information to add, please contact Nigel Smith. For technical problems with the site (such as pages not displaying correctly or search results being incorrect) please contact Tony Green
8. The embedded map sometimes either takes ages to load or doesn't load at all. What's going wrong?
   
   This shouldn't normally happen, but we have observed that it can be a problem if you're using Firefox and have the Firebug externsion enabled (normally only web developers would use this so it shouldn't be a problem for most people).

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