Ding! Ding! Move Along the Bus, Please. #15
- Stewart
- 11 minutes ago
- 4 min read
It's time to reboard the virtual bus and continue on our journey which started with this post about the bygone boozers on Hall Quay in Great Yarmouth. We've passed a number of other bygones so far, including the Anson Arms, the Halfway House, the Greyhound and the Rising Sun with our most recent stop being at Gorleston's former George & Dragon.
I have to admit that I only discovered that the subject this post was once a pub relatively recently. I had been looking into what will now have to be the next port of call on this virtual voyage when I came across a mention of the Crown Hotel at 91 High Street. I must have passed the place thousands of times in my youth without having an inkling about its earlier life.
A beerhouse, the Crown Hotel was to be found on the north-west corner of Police Station Lane, now Duke Lane. The earliest that I've been able to find reference to it is in the 1871 census when Anna Harris was in residence...
...although the Norfolk Pubs website suggests that her brother, William Howes, was there from at least as early as 1844.
Anna had moved on by 1878 when the Yarmouth Gazette and North Norfolk Constitutionalist of the 27th July named the landlord, John Keable, in a report about his appearance in front of the town's magistrates, accused of permitting drunkenness. With the building next door being the police station, perhaps he should have been a little more circumspect.
By the time of the next headcount, in April 1881, the enumerator recorded a George Green at the Crown...
...though five months later it seems that he is selling up and moving on, according to a sale announcement in the Yarmouth Gazette and North Norfolk Constitutionalist of 10th September.
George might have quit the Crown but he stayed in the business. He moved to the Dial on Dereham Road in Norwich, another bygone boozer, where he was to be found at the next census, before returning to Great Yarmouth and the Apollo on Northgate Street. And yes, that's gone too.
In 1888, Kelly lists a Samuel Gowing as a beer retailer on the High Street...
...and White's offering a couple of years later puts him at number ninety-one – the Crown.
Samuel was still there in 1896...
...but he'd been replaced by Joseph Baster when the enumerator for the 1901 census came a-knocking.
By the time of the next population survey in 1911 Ernest Easto was the landlord at the Crown...
...and he was its final one. On 13th June 1913, the Crown was referred for compensation under 1910's Licensing (Consolidation) Act – along with Yarmouth's Albion, Free Trade Tavern and Cooper's Arms – as reported in the Yarmouth Independent the following week.
Yarmouth Independent, Saturday 21 June 1913:–
Its licence expired in September 1913.
I've racked my brain to try to come up with what the building was used for half a century ago, when I used to regularly walk along the pavement in front of it, but my memory has let me down. I've even resorted to looking in my Kelly's directory of Great Yarmouth from 1972, but that didn't help me as it only listed a person's name at number 91, with no suggestion of a business operating from the address.
If I can't let you know what was happening in the building in 1972 I can tell you what it's up to today. Today it's home to Mini Cuts, providing haircuts for youngsters. They won't know that they're getting trimmed in a bygone boozer and I doubt that their parents, or even grandparents, would be aware of that fact either.
And with that it's time for me to nip out and get my spring shearing. I might even pop into a non-bygone boozer whilst I'm in town. It is Friday, after all. Friday counts as the weekend, doesn't it?
The newspaper images are courtesy of the British Newspaper Archive: www.britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk.
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