Loose Chippings is a straggling village on the edge of the salt marshes and was one of the earliest Anglo-Saxon settlements in England. It was abandoned after a year. Following the Norman Conquest the Manor was given to Roger Grosseteste as a punishment for being late for the Battle of Hastings, and it remained in the Grotesque family until 1965, when the last member went insane and presented it to the Inland Revenue. It is now used as an asylum.

The village, which can only be reached along an unmade, unclassified road, has been burned down three times; once by drunken crusaders who were lost returning from the Holy Land; again when two Lancastrian armies fought each other there by night during the Wars of the Roses; and in 1907 when a village fire brigade exercise went disastrously wrong. Being separated from the rest of the community by a creek, the Spread Eagle escaped the latter fire and consequently it is the oldest building in the village.

Due to a clerical error, this ancient inn was included in the very first Good Beer Guide, and, apart from a short period, has been owned by the same family since 1645. It was built in that year as a brothel for parliamentary troops who were besieging the nearby castle and was granted a licence by King Charles II in 1661. It was known as the King’s Arms for many years, but at the time of the French Revolution the name was changed to the Antigallican.

During Victorian times the Antigallican was a temperance hotel for several years and later became a refuge for fallen women, but its consequent popularity led to it becoming a pub again around the middle of the century, when it was sold to Oddsock’s brewery of Reekingham and the name changed back to the King’s Arms. When Oddsocks was taken over a year later by Frothbury and Son, the freehold was handed back to the Dickins family as a gesture, presumably of goodwill. During World War I the building narrowly escaped a bombing raid by a Zeppelin, and in the Second World War it was temporarily captured by German paratroopers who had been reading about its early history. The landlady, Elvira Dickins, was so charmed by the courtesy of the German officer that she renamed the pub the Spread Eagle after the German imperial emblem.

The building is a conventional 17th-century, timber-framed building of cruck construction with a thatched roof of local reed – now badly in need of renovation. The original interior has been largely retained, with three small, interconnecting oak-beamed rooms. The large oak table in the middle one has a shove ha’penny hoard carved into one end and, during World War II, provided a refuge for the village children when there was an air raid.

The two end rooms each have an inglenook fireplace, but these are hidden behind Victorian-tiled grates. There was originally an exterior door to each room, but two of them were blocked up when the pub was occupied by the fallen women. The remaining iron-studded door still bears the bullet holes from an attack by the royalist defenders of the castle in 1646 when they had run out of beer. The floors are made of stone taken from the castle when it was blown up by the Chartists in 1848. A brick-and-tile extension was built onto the back of the building during the 18th century to serve as a customs office, but for some unexplained reason the floor is actually below sea level. The tiles were stolen in 1980 by a visiting biker gang to use against a rival group, and the extension, which is used as a walk-in servery, is now roofed in corrugated asbestos. The men’s toilets are, naturally, outside and are open to the stars, earning them the nickname the Planetarium.

The present landlord, Helmut Dickins, is reckoned to be the rudest licensee in the country and is rarely seen. However, his wife Elvira makes up for it by loving everybody, which does mean that the pub can be crowded at times.

The Spread Eagle is unique in that it serves no beer with an original gravity of less than 1085, and Mr Dickins refuses to stock half-pint glasses on the grounds that they are finicky to wash up. Consequently, what has been known since 1943 as the German’s Room often doubles as a dormitory. The pub is the headquarters of the Loose Chippings After Hours Mountain Rescue and Darts team and has been bottom of the local league every year since its formation in 1934. The most popular pastime in the pub is playing the four fruit machines. The only food provided is crisps and pickled eggs.

As the only pub within 12 miles, the Spread Eagle is very popular with the locals and has an atmosphere that is difficult to describe. It has been mentioned in several guidebooks, and Mr Dickins is seriously considering legal action against all of them. It is certainly an inn to be visited, once.