One of the more colourful of our public house landlords in recent times was David Owen who was for many years landlord of the Angel Hotel and also bought and remodelled two other hostelries in the locality.

David was born at Liverpool in 1936 and during the Second World War he was evacuated to Wales, first to a castle and then to a farm. He later moved to Belfast and Preston in Lancashire before opting for a life at sea and enjoying many adventures with the Merchant Navy. He was called up for National Service which he served with the Royal Air Force and after demobilisation, ran a mushroom business near Sleaford in Lincolnshire for a spell.

He married and from 1970 to 1976, he and his wife Margaret ran the Angel Hotel at Bourne where he persuaded the brewery to make some improvements. During his time there he was host to many famous guests including Formula 1 racing drivers, the singer Suzy Quatro, members of the band Hot Chocolate and pop star Gary Glitter.

He also bought the old Crown public house in the main street at nearby Dyke village which he set about restoring, giving it a new name in the process, The Wishing Well, after finding an old well on the premises. This was rebuilt inside the restaurant and remains a feature to this day. He later bought the White Horse at Baston which, after refurbishment, was renamed the Spinning Wheel and both pubs retain those names today.

David was perhaps best known in the Bourne area for driving around in his Rolls Royce Silver Shadow.

He remarried and with his second wife, Jean, moved to north Wales in 1976 but decided to return to Bourne in 2003 to be close to his family. He had three children, eight grandchildren and four great grandchildren, all living in the Bourne, Morton and Edenham areas.

In 2005, he wrote a short autobiography entitled A War Baby in response to a publishing offer from the Daily Mail. The 70-page book, which covered the years 1935 to 2005, was later re-named Liverpool War Baby and was available as an e-book from the Amazon website.

In 2012, his daughter, Abbe Morris, of Morton, near Bourne, who edited the manuscript, said that her father was then very ill and would like former friends and colleagues to know the story was available for them to read. "Dad was very well known in the Bourne area in the 1970s but then moved away to Wales before coming back to Bourne again", she said. "Since his story went online it has had 700 Kindle downloads, 170 of them in the United States. At one point, as a new historical autobiography, it was top of the list, above Alan Sugar."

David once said that he was disappointed that historic touches to the three hostelries with which he had been associated had not been maintained by later owners. “They changed the Angel Hotel completely", he said. "There used to be a really old bow window in the reception area which we had restored. It was an original feature and it has now been removed which is a shame. The timber beams he installed at Baston have also been painted white which he thought was an incongruous change."

David, who lived in Westwood Drive, Bourne, died at home on Friday 10th August 2012, aged 77. He was cremated at Peterborough.

WRITTEN OCTOBER 2012

See also

The Angel Hotel     The Wishing Well