Some early Facts and Information concerning certain Adelaide Hotels |
| The following information was compiled by Reg Butler (Hahndorf Historian) from numerous sources and extracted from his unpublished computer files. |
Astor 95 TA - 168 Gawler Place.
Baker’s Arms TA - 194 Waymouth St/Light Square
Opened rooms for people from the country May 1842.
Black Bull TA - 49 58 Hindley St
Frearson’s Weekly 16/2/1878 p2 - The Black Bull Hotel, once the hotel of Adelaide, is to be rebuilt at a cost of £5,000. Operations are to commence at once.
Club House Hotel TA - 74
William Williams 1st publican. Began as the Victoria, ‘next to those large premises belonging to Messrs JB and S Hack’, ‘for the accommodation of families and gentlemen arriving in the colony, and where every possible attention will be paid to the comfort of those who may honour him with their patronage’. One large public dining room, 3 smaller ones private, several double and single bedrooms, subscription billiards room, a most comfortable, airy, and extensive livery stables, stockyard etc. The stable is now open for the reception of horses. There is a plentiful supply of hay and corn, and a most experienced groom, who is well-known to most of the colonists.’
Commercial Hotel 95 TA - 168 Gawler Place
Struck by lightning 23/2/1842 Adelaide Examiner.
Frearson’s Weekly 8/5/1880 p146 - The Commercial Hotel, Grenfell-st, has changed hands, and is now under the proprietorship of Mrs Lindrum, widow of the late FW Lindrum, of the Crown Hotel, Pt Victor. The character of the house will be considerably raised by the change, Mrs Lindrum enjoying a good name, and will, no doubt, meet with the hearty support of the public.
Fordham’s 106 TA - 103 Grenfell St.
Charles Lewis Huon and William Samuel Fooks boarded at Fordham’s in 1840. Involved in a court case 16//3/1842.
Imperial Hotel TA 108 - 80 King William St
Frearson’s Weekly 6/7/1878 p138 - Mr J Reed has secured the well-known Imperial Hotel, King William St … It has been thoroughly renovated from the pantry to the bar internally, and has a fresh and lively appearance externally. Mr Reed informs us that it is his intention to make the premises what they have long wanted to be viz, respectable and accommodating …
John O’Groats TA - 56 Hindley St
Francis Mitchell conducted Harmonic Society meetings from May 1842.
Queen’s Birthday ball 24/5/1842.
John Bull Hotel TA - 137 Currie St
Frearson’s Weekly 20/9/1879 p250 - The John Bull Yards and livery stables are now under the proprietorship of Mr JA Hardy, whose long connection with the White Horse Stables has made him popular amongst a large section of the community. Mr Hardy intends to devote himself with renewed energy to the various branches of his business …
Norfolk Arms TA - 80 Rundle St
Frearson’s Weekly 21/12/1878 p338 - Mr Phillip Lee, who has recently secured the proprietorship of the well-known Norfolk Arms in Rundle-st, has, at great expense, had that hotel thoroughly renovated. The interior has been overhauled from top to bottom, which adds a refreshing appearance to every room, whilst the exterior portion bears evident marks of the artist’s handiwork. Mrssrs Schutt & Hofmeyer, painters, of North Adelaide, were the executors of the whole of the work.
Oakley Arms TA - 651 Gilles St
Wrestling matches Sep 1842.
Royal Admiral TA - 72 Hindley St
Overland cattle guide Charles Millar died in the hotel 28/2/1842
Advertisement Adelaide Examiner 23/6/1842.
Royal Bush TA - 243 Franklin St
WA Deacon began country spring cart services in May 1842 - to the Adelaide Hills and Marino.
Southern Cross Hotel TA - 113 Currie St
Description of interior 1838 Frearson’s Weekly 5/10/1878 p 253.
Frearson’s Weekly 4/12/1880 p612 - Mrs CB Allen, formerly landlady of the Southern Cross Hotel, and a colonist of 44 years, died on 29/11/1880, at the age of 66.
Tasmanian TA - 71 Hindley St
Court case 3/5/1842 re disturbances at hotel.
Tavistock Hotel TA 35 - 224 Rundle St.
Rebuilding Observer 13/12/1884 p 1141.
Thistle Inn TA - 200 Waymouth St
Frearson’s Weekly 30/8/1879 p226 - Charles Richards, an ostler, who was kicked by a horse on Friday night at the Thistle Inn, died at the Adelaide hospital on Sunday morning last.
Victoria Hotel TA - 74 Hindley St
JW Henry opened a coffee room in his hotel May 1842.
Volunteer TA - 77 Hindley St
Patrick Auld advertised 14/9/1842
White Hart Hotel TA - 77 Hindley St
The friends of Host Klauer, of the White Hart Hotel, will be pleased to hear, that having recovered from indisposition, he left Adelaide a week ago, for the old country. About a month since he made arrangements for leaving, but on the eve of his projected departure was suddenly taken ill, and forced to remain until his health was re-established. He will be absent six months.
York Hotel TA - 87 Rundle St
Frearson’s Weekly 6/7/1878 p138 - Mr WE Ford, whose name is inseparably connected with Clare, and whose hotel at that place is perhaps the best-known hotel in SA, is now the proprietor of the York Hotel. In this new sphere, Mr Ford will have ample field for the exercise of those abilities he undoubtedly possesses; whilst his genial and courteous treatment of his customers in the past, cannot fail to prove an additional attraction to the York in the future.
Frearson’s Weekly 23/4/1881 p169. - c1850s Cockney Tom Bastard’s biography
The Victoria Hotel - 94 Hindley St, Adelaide
Colonial South Australia did not lack for ambitious young men, and certainly not in Adelaide’s Hindley Street. Storekeeper William Williams had found his way to the area by 2 July 1837, when he married Jane Catchlove, a member of a family destined to play a major role in the colony’s thriving innkeeping business. Williams himself also became fired with his new relatives’ visions. For a time, luck favoured him.
During May 1838, William Williams purchased half of Town Acre 74, half way between King William Street and Light Square, on Hindley Street’s southern side. Here, he abandoned pedestrian storekeeping for much more lucrative cattle trading. To cheer patrons, a humble shanty named the Grazier’s Hotel also opened on the site.
By year’s end, William was ready to expand even further. The Register of 13 October 1838 announced that he had just erected ‘an extensive sale room, with a large and convenient stock yard in front’, spilling over on to Town Acre 75. Flanking him were the grand mercantile establishments of JB & S Hack and Captain Walker. As a general auctioneer, W Williams dabbled in profitable land, cattle and timber.
Quickly, Williams engaged his master builder brother-in-law, Edward Catchlove, to create a much more glamorous Victoria Hotel, named after the colony’s vivacious young sovereign Queen Victoria, to replace the lowly Grazier’s. Several gracious stone buildings, worth £500, henceforth catered to passing trade and housed the Williams family. While William continued to speculate in commodities, his wife, Jane, no doubt supervised the hotel. Yet, even all this failed to satisfy for very long.
A year later, William Williams crossed Hindley Street, to portion of Town Acre 51, purchased from the estate of South Australia’s bankrupt Colonial Printer, Robert Thomas. Here, an even grander Victoria Hotel opened its doors, while the older Victoria withdrew from public access to become a private club for the colonial elite. After the new Victoria opened for business in March 1840, patrons could watch the South Australia Club’s trustees, James Hurtle Fisher and John Morphett, regularly escort fellow members to and from their permanent headquarters opposite.
Two years later, William Williams was again on the move. He leased the Victoria’s bar trade to Thomas Hornsby and the adjacent livery stable to Samuel Cobbyn. Life proved far more exiliarating in the thick of trading in real estate for the numerous villages rising on the fertile plains between Adelaide and the Adelaide Hills. By 1847, W Williams had amassed enough capital to open a profitable brewery right beside the Torrens River at Walkerville, the salubrious sub-division of his Hindley Street neighbour, Captain Walker. Both these gentlemen unwisely turned their backs upon Hindley Street, which had been so kind to them in their early years in South Australia.
The Victoria Hotel passed to Joseph Addison, a canny doctor turned farmer, who preferred to live unostentatiously on his estates at the Reedbeds, in the vicinity of modern Henley Beach. Mostly, he made headlines in nurturing South Australia’s infant cricket teams, one or other of which he usually captained. Quietly, he was buying up strategic rental properties to help finance his coming retirement to Hampshire in southern England. Not unnaturally, Addison preferred to leave his Hindley Street investment in reliable hands during the long period of well over thirty years he owned the premises. For much of that time, either well-respected Henry Foote or Emily Taylor held the leasehold.
Indeed, Emily Taylor was foundation publican Jane Williams’ niece, the eldest daughter of Jane’s brother Henry Catchlove. Emily Catchlove married grazier George Taylor at St Paul’s Pulteney St, in 1860, the first wedding celebrated in that well-known Adelaide landmark. Aunt Jane possibly noted the occasion rather somberly, as her husband, William, had managed to become a bankrupt twice during the 1850s, and divested himself of this world’s worries in 1858, at the relatively early age of 54. Perhaps the Victoria Hotel’s foundation publican might have fared better in life had he been content to concentrate more on its wellbeing, instead of hiving off into various showy speculations.
During 1881, Mrs Taylor bought the Victoria Hotel from Joseph Addison - now an old man, he had decided to relieve himself of some of his South Australian investments. For over thirty years, she traded in Hindley Street, becoming in the processs one of the street’s best-known personalities. Life at the hotel became tame indeed, the most exciting incident perhaps being an upstairs bedroom fire in March 1892, which did not even rate a mention in the daily press. In 1903, Emily handed over ownership of the Victoria Hotel to her only daughter, Harriet Nott, and then retired finally during 1909.
Catchlove descendants continued a more tenuous association with the hotel their family had founded in 1840. Harriet Nott remained content to lease the business to the South Australian Brewing Company, which issued an increasingly bewildering number of underleases to operate the front bar. After Mrs Nott transferred her interest in the hotel to her family in 1931, the Notts dealt through a company, the Victoria Hotel Ltd, regarding the hotel’s affairs.
23 March 1892. Vol 5 Coroner’s reports - 1892.
Princes Group of Companies had their headquarters at 28 Waymouth St, Adelaide. Princes Enterprises, Princes Holdings, Princes World Wide Pty Ltd.
23/12/1837 Land grant Robert Thomas printer Adelaide £10/10/-.
11/1/1838 To the SA Company, mortgage for £500 at 10%, R Thomas went bankrupt.
26/8/1840 To Osmond Gilles Esquire Hindley St, Adelaide & Edward Stephens Esquire North Tce, Adelaide, in trust, with power to sell.
The trustees sub-divided the land into quarters - strips running down to Hindley St. When was Victoria St named - probably in the 1850s, after the hotel?
The Western Moiety
The Middle Quarter in the Western Moiety
Application 18675 - the middle quarter facing Hindley St in the western moiety - the Victoria Hotel.
28/9/1839 To William Williams publican Adelaide £350
25/9/1847 Williams now of Walkerville publican to Joseph Addison Esquire Reedbeds £1,700, the Victoria Hotel and stables, now in the charge of Thomas Hornsby and Samuel Cobbyn respectively.
17/5/1875 To Henry Foote licensed victualler Adelaide, 21 year lease at £325 a year. For 25 years, Edward Armand Wright was the attorney for Joseph Addison, who must have left SA before this time. EA Wright left SA in 1879. His successor in the land agent business was his former clerk Charles Lyons.
3/8/1881 Joseph Addison, of parts beyond the sea to Mrs Emily Taylor Hindley St, Adelaide £5,900 in a complicated agreement.
4/8/1881 RPA Joseph Addison, of parts beyond the sea. Value £5,900. A discrepency here between the two dates of RPA and sale. Perhaps no more than registration? *ADDISON, Joseph (//-//) Doctor, farmer; Reedbeds. Captained the 1st cricket team formed in SA. Retired to Mapledurwell Basingstoke, Hants, England. Captained the Hackwood Park Cricket Team. Probably did not practise medicine in SA. - Observer 13/2/1869 p 4e.
Mapledurwell ‘We leave the Motor Age at Polecat Corner and turn up rough lanes into the Cart Age, to be welcomed at the end of one of them by a shapely little church and a charming cottage or two.’
13/2/1860 George Earle Taylor, youngest son of Charles Taylor Esquire and his wife Harriet, of The Priory Totnes, Devon, m Emily, 2nd daughter of Henry Catchlove, licensed victualler of the Tavistock Hotel, of Rundle St, Adelaide. 1st marriage in St Paul’s Pulteney St. Canon Russell presented them with a handsome Prayer Book.
18/10/1887 Christ Church North Adelaide, Dean Marryat, Albert Edward Nott, son of Dr Nott of Gawler, to Harriet Augusta, only daughter of George Earle and Emily Taylor, of Adelaide. GE Taylor died 3/1/1900 235 Flinders St, Adelaide.
Emily Taylor licensed victualler Adelaide, wife of George Earle Taylor Esquire of the Murray River.
Town Acre 74 - Hindley St. Sheet 70.
23/12/1837 Land grant John Barton Hack Esquire Adelaide £8/2/-.
He sub-divided the TA.
The Eastern Moiety
Application 18273 - the eastern moiety of the TA
24/5/1838 To William Williams storekeeper Adelaide 10/-.
29/8/1839 William Williams hotelkeeper Adelaide and Jane, his wife, to the SA Club (JH Fisher Esquire, John Morphett Esquire Adelaide, William Light Esquire Thebarton), ‘together with a dwelling house … and built lately used as an inn or hotel containing a cellar, hall and four rooms on the ground floor and a long room and three bedrooms on the first floor … and also the stone building attached to the said dwellinghouse containing on the ground floor a kitchen and a long room intended to be divided into four the upper part intended for five bedrooms being unfinished, and a billiards room finished with stone and having a buck floor, also the stable building for 19 horses built with broad paling with the small store and dwelling house attached and the water closet and also the well in the yard and the windlass and rope thereto … ‘ Edward Catchlove carpenter and builder had erected these premises, the Club House Hotel, for £500.
2/7/1837 William Williams m Jane Catchlove. He was first a storekeeper, who branched out quickly into an auctioneer for land, cattle and timber on TAs 74-75, ‘where there has just been erected an extensive sale room, with a large and convenient stock yard in front’, between the stores of JB Hack and Captain Walker. Bought the eastern moiety of TA 74 from JB Hack in May 1838 and hired his brother-in-law Edward Catchlove to erect the first Victoria Hotel, which finished its existence as the Club House Hotel. Sold the property for £500. Used the profits to cross the road to buy portion of TA 51 from the trustees of Robert Thomas, the bankrupt Rosina St printer, for £350, in September 1839. Owned the hotel until 1847, when he sold the property to Joseph Addison, a Reedbeds doctor-cum-farmer. Had already sold the lease to Thomas Hornsby and Samuel Cobbyn, who had the hotel and adjacent stables respectively from 1843. Addison immediately sold the lease to William Williams’ brother-in-law, Charles Catchlove.
Joseph Addison died 9/3/1888 at Mapledurwell. His wife, Emma, had died beforehand. He had made his will 5/7/1882, making his wife, together with his nephews John Hennell gent Rose Hill Road, Wandsworth, Surrey and Thomas Hennell civil engineer Ramsden Road, Balham, Surrey, executors of his will. The Hennells appointed Frederick Wright, Charles Lyons and Charles Sydney Leader estate agents Adelaide, as the agents and attorneys for his SA estate. Arthur Lamb solicitor Baskingstoke must have been the family lawyer.
1840 William Williams innkeeper Adelaide bought 6 lots in Kensington from John Brown and Charles Catchlove. He subdivided them into 72 lots. William St (Salter St) down the cente between Hill and Regent St. Queen (Maesbury) and Bridge St on the east and west. Already selling lots in 1840
1844 William Williams auctioneer Adelaide bought land in Walkerville.
28/11/1851 William Williams brewer Walkerville became insolvent. Samuel Elkington Boord his trade assignee. He was already a brewer in 1845 at Walkerville, buying lots bordering on Nailsworth Tce and Wandsworth St, overlooking the Torrens River. Insolvency annulled 25/2/1853.
3/7/1856 William Williams brewer Walkerville became insolvent for the second time. William Johnstone trade assignee.
Information from Application 29181
24/9/1868 Harriet Forbes landlady Criterion Hotel, Adelaide, wife of Charles Forbes storekeeper Myponga, declared that she was a daughter of Edward Catchlove and a sister of Jane Williams nee Catchlove. She witnessed the marriage, solemnised by the Colonial Chaplain, of Jane with William Williams ‘in a room that had been set apart for divine service and solemnisation of marriages in the parish of Trinity Church, the building of Trinity Church not having been completed at that time, I being the bridesmaid’. William Finke was the groomsman. Williams was about 30 when he married. She first knew W Williams when he and she used to visit 6 Adephi Tce, the Emigration Commissioners’ office in London, to see Richard Robert Torrens. Eldest son William Williams II born at a Hindley St hotel on 25/3/1838 and baptised Holy Trinity NT on 25/3/1840. William Williams II was the Clerk of the District Council of Waterloo in 1868. William Williams the Elder died 26/4/1858, aged 54, of consumption, ‘which illness however, had not been expected to terminate fatally so soon, and in consequence of this last-mentioned circumstance it has so happened that the making of a will by him was not at that time thought of either by himself or any of those about him, and I am sure that had he ever made his will before, it would have been known to me and to his wife and family or relations generally, none of whom has ever mentioned the existence of such a will as a fact or as a probability’. William Williams II inherited the estate as heir at law.
He sold Kensington land to his mother in 1869. Jane Williams widow lived at Stone Hut in 1876 when she sold the land to her sister Harriet Forbes.
13/9/1882 Harriet Forbes died. She had been living apart from her husband since 2/9/1857, when ‘the earnings and property of the said Harriett Forbes acquired by her …, shall be protected from the said Charles Forbes and from all creditors and persons claiming under him’ Supreme Court Order taken out 24/8/1860. Her son Edward Catchlove Lockyer inherited her estate.
4/6/1900 Edward Catchlove Lockyer died.
