THERE’S nothing like having a session with your mates to lift a person's spirits.

As this picture poignantly proves, a little drinking is good for the soul.

Look at these punters’ cheerful disposition and open and relaxed body language. And check out the slightly startled way the bartender (who looks suspiciously like the drummer from Green Day) is looking at the photographer like he's an alien life-form.

Not to mention the old timer leaning against the wall with an expression that seems to say, "You need working on, boy!"

And couldn’t the guy with his back to the camera be none other than Joe Strummer?

What merry pub crawler wouldn't feel instantly at home in a boozer like this?

Sadly, the Old Duke that once stood in Abergavenny's Castle Street is no more. This picture was taken just before it was demolished in 1962.

In medieval times, when swords, horses, and drinking dirty water were all the rage, Castle Street was tucked safely within Abergavenny’s town walls and stretched westwards from the castle to the western gate, also known as Tudor Gate.

As a walled town, Abergavenny could be a claustrophobic, suspicious, and hostile kind of place that didn’t take kindly to strangers, but as long as you could drink your own body weight in beer and still maintain the mask of relative sobriety by the end of the night, you would have been alright.

The fellas in this pic obviously knew how to handle a jar or two, but every picture tells a story, and this one’s tinged with sadness for what once was and will never be again.

Shortly after this photo was snapped, the Old Duke fell foul of Abergavenny Borough Council’s general slum clearance scheme.

The building, which had been serving up pints since the early years of the nineteenth century, was reduced to rubble and consigned to memory.

The pub was situated between Castle Street School and Old Court on the south side of the street, but now, like many buildings that once stood in that corner of Abergavenny, it’s difficult to visualise exactly where.

The building itself dates from the early 17th century and consisted of coursed sandstone rubble.

In 1845, the landlady was listed as Ann Barton, and in 1875, the pub was officially listed as the “Old Drake” rather than the “Old Duke.” Whoops!

Landlords come, and landlords go, but the pubs remain. At least they did until the present government made it nigh on impossible for a good old boozer to survive.

However, the Old Duke didn’t go under because of indifference, cut-throat rates and the alarming rise in ‘sobriety journeys;’ it was a thing called “progress” and the swing of the wrecking ball that did for it.

All that remains is an old photograph, a few scattered recollections and possibly some long-term liver damage.

But what a photo, hey?

The gentleman on the left with his head in hand is actually Mr. Duggan Thacker. He was the first honorary curator of Abergavenny's museum, and a lot of what we now know about the town is courtesy of this fine gentleman.

Cheers!