IF YOU live in a pub, life is never dull. Janette Seale is proof of that. Her father George Livsey ran three pubs in York between 1939 and 1962, and she has enough memories and anecdotes to fill a brewer’s barrel – with tales of beer and banter but also bigots and bombs.

Few of her stories are more dramatic or harrowing than the time her whole family and their pub were nearly wiped out by the Nazis, at the height of the Second World War.

George was off fighting with the Army, so his wife Hylda, Janette’s mother, was in charge of The Golden Ball in Cromwell Road, Bishophill, on the night it was nearly destroyed by the Luftwaffe.

Janette, now 71, was only a young girl back then but knows the story well.

“We used the underground cellar of The Golden Ball as an air-raid shelter, so when the sirens went we would have dived down there. My father was in the Army so it would have been myself, my mother, my mother’s sister Beatrice and her daughter Kathleen.

“There was a big church opposite the pub which was being used as a blanket store. The bombs were aimed at York Station but some missed and went in a line. One hit the convent and one bomb fell on the church opposite the pub but did not explode.

“They got bomb disposal people out the next day to remove it – if it had gone off, neither the pub nor I would be here now.”

The church, St Mary’s Bishophill Senior, was decommissioned and eventually demolished in 1963 but the pub and the Livseys lived to fight another day. When George returned from the war, the family moved from The Golden Ball to The Beeswing in Hull Road.

There, as a teenager in the 1950s, Janette got her first experience of racial diversity and the intolerance that went with it – but she was proud to see her father take a stand.

“Some coloured soldiers were stationed down the road and had come for a drink,” recalls Janette. “They asked my father if they could have a drink and he said that as long as they had the money to pay for it, then everyone was welcome in his pub.

“But the military police said ‘what are they doing here?’ and they said my father should not serve them.

“My father said ‘I’m in charge of this pub and I decide who comes and goes’. He was adamant that they had paid for their drink and were entitled to stay, and the ones making a kerfuffle were the military police – so he ordered them out instead.”

In 1957, George and the family were on the move again, after he was headhunted to run the brand new White Rose Hotel in Cornlands Road, an exciting move to a new part of the city.

Says Janette: “We went a number of times to see the various stages of building and to compare the progress with the Catholic church at the corner of Cornlands Road and Gale Lane, which was built at the same time.

“The White Rose was a good lively pub, with a large bar and lounge rooms, plus a small off-licence.

“The family living area was all on the first floor. It enjoyed a very friendly local clientele. The ground level cellar with large double doors made for much easier deliveries of the barrels, very large oak ones at that time, and bottled beer as well as maintenance works.

“Opening hours in those days were 11am to 2.30pm and then 5.30pm to 10.30pm, with shorter hours on Sunday. Doors were firmly locked at closing time.

A full-page advert in the Yorkshire Evening Press on June 3, 1957 (the day the White Rose opened) shows it had all the latest technology and comforts, including a “Frigidaire” beer cooler, and “radio relay” sound system, as well as spacious facilities for patrons “in keeping with the best modern design”.

If the inside was luxurious though, the White Rose had its flaws – and Janette had something of an insight into why vandals kept getting into the pub as it fell into disrepair last year.

“All that was needed was to climb the drain pipe at the rear corner, vault over the railings on to the flat roof of the cellar and in through the rear bedroom window,” she points out. She declines to say whether that’s the voice of experience, adding simply: “I’ll leave the answer to you.”

Looking back, she adds: “Many happy years were spent at all three pubs and I have some lovely memories – not all fully appreciated at the time, with parents living on the job.”

Janette, who now lives near Bristol, contacted The Press after reading about the demolition late last year of The White Rose, which had closed 12 months earlier. Sadly all except a couple of photos of her father’s pub days were lost during a break in when Janette lived on a house-boat.