SIGN OF THE TIMES

In the late 1940s and early 1950s, when I was a boy on a bike with a desire to explore hitherto unknown territories, I used to collect the names of public houses. I have no real idea why, yet I would carefully write down any name or sign I saw, and hadn't already noted, and then inscribe it into an alphabetical ledger which my father had obtained from somewhere or other and given to me. After a time, of course, the numbers of names ran into hundreds, which was impressive but quite, quite useless for research or reference purposes.
I certainly liked the idea of collecting pub names - even though I had never been inside one - and enjoyed recording them, I suppose because it was something to do in the long, dark, TV-free evenings. But I didn't do it properly. I didn't write, next to each name, the address or location. Just the name. Years later, of course, it dawned on me that all I had got was a list. Nothing more. And a fairly boring list, to boot.
The odd thing is I still tend to glance at pub names, hoping to spot something unusual, and I have even been inside a few. But one that I have glanced at more than most is the Sir Garnet, a picturesque pub which famously overlooks Norwich open-air market. Glanced at it, not because it is so obviously unusual, but because I didn't know much about the chap it commemorates, and guessed that not many Norwich people did, either.
Sir Garnet Wolseley (1833-1913) was a heavily decorated Anglo-Irish officer in the British Army. Educated in Dublin, he worked for a time in a surveyors' office and then obtained a commission, in 1852. A year later he was wounded in the Anglo-Burmese war, but the following year (1854) he still managed to accompany the 84th Regiment of Foot to Balaklava, and was present at the Siege of Sevastopal, where he was wounded yet again and this time lost an eye.
Undaunted, and already decorated, he then distinguished himself at the Relief of Lucknow, and in 1860 accompanied British troops to China. In 1862 he took leave to investigate the American Civil War, meeting both Robert E Lee and Stonewall Jackson, after which he busied himself in Canada, wrote a handbook for the troops, and in 1870 commanded the Red River Expedition, leading his men through hundreds of miles of wilderness.
He was appointed Adjutant-General to the Forces in 1882 and later raised to the peerage as Baron Wolseley. He became Field-Marshal in 1894, died on the French Riviera in 1913, and was buried in St Paul's Cathedral. I believe there is an equestrian statue of him in Horse Guards Parade. Phew! And I haven't even mentioned his input into the Ashanti Campaign in the 1870s, the Nile Expedition in the 1880s, or his becoming Commander of Forces in the 1890s. Another time, perhaps.
Si Garnet Wolseley was an unstoppable force, a real Victorian and Boys' Own hero, and indeed, there was once a saying that, 'Everything's Sir Garnet,' meaning that everything was in order.  He was even caricatured by WS Gilbert in The Pirates of Penzance as, 'The very model of a modern major-general.'
Norwich's pub opened in 1861 and adopted his name in 1874, when he was at the absolute height of his fame.