Lost Pubs Of Leicester

by Barry Lount & Chris Jinks

Old Flying Horse, 20 Wellington Street

About 100 yards down Wellington St from the corner of Belvoir St you will see the entrance to Wellington House, which was built in about 1970 for the General Accident Insurance although much of the building on the Wellington St. side has, since the early 1980s, been occupied by HSBC Bank.

It was at the site of the aforementioned entrance that John Nokes (a hairdresser) built a property with a 16ft entrance frontage to Wellington St on 171 square yards of land which he had purchased in 1822 from Thomas Miller for £65-2s-0d.

By 1833, the property was being used as a retail beer shop called The Flying Horse although it was not long before it was upgraded to a public house. The pub had many owners in it's early years,including a brewer from Kimberly in Nottingham, Robert Hanson one of the forunners of Hardy Hansons. A couple fell foul of the law and were prosecuted for gaming offences including Thomas Hutt who took out a mortgage with Bass Ratcliffe & Gretton. The pub was sold to Worthington &Co of Burton-upon Trent in 1898.

A schedule of the tenant's fixtures in 1897 the year of Thomas Hutts prosecution showed that the pub had three floors with several bedrooms on the top floor. In addition to the vaults, bar, smoke and snug there was a club room, kitchen, pantry and yard. The tenant owned the signboard at the front together with the iron cornice and lettering on the walls.

The pub continued to operate until around 1969 when it was demolished along with surrounding buildings to make way for the new four storey Wellington House. It is said during the construction of this building a workman fell to his death down a lift shaft. However something far more gruesome occurred here 140 years before.

James Cook had a workshop for his bookbinding business here and on 30th of May 1832 a tool cutter and engraver by the name of John Paas called on him hoping to get an order. On the very next night neighbours saw Cooks workshop chimney on fire ,as they reached the scene they noticed a strange smell emitting from the flames, on forcing their way in they found a hunk of meat on top of the grate, a constable who was at the scene questioned Cook and Cook explained the meat was for his dog but it had gone off, therefore he decided to burn it. The constable was not entirely satisfied with Cooks explanation and took some of the charred flesh away for examination.

However when the meat was examined by a surgeon,it turned out they were the bones and remains of a human being - the aforementioned John Paas!

Cook had already made a sharp exit and had reached Liverpool port before being apprehended and bought back to Leicester to stand trial. Cook finally made a full confession, admitting killing Mr Paas with a hammer and dissecting the body with a saw and cleaver with short interludes of watching his neighbours playing bowls and drinking at the Flying Horse, in his inebriated state he failed to finish the job of burning the body and left it smouldering, where a spark caught a pile of shavings which flared up the chimney.

Cook was hanged before a crowd of 30,000 in front of Welford Rd prison on the 10th of August, his body was then put on a gibbet and suspended from a 33ft pole at the junction of Saffron Lane and Aylestone Road,where 20,000 people came to view it over the next three days. Cooks motive for murder was money as he robbed Mr Paas and he may have got away with it if it wasn't for the Flying Horse and its temptation of drink. Cook was buried near the junction where he had been suspended on the gibbet. In 1930 workmen digging a ditch came across a coffin remains, was this James Cook?

This page last updated: May 28, 2008

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