The King's Head Inn and its Landlords

[Bayleaf]

This is Part four of Talks of the Town, a lecture by R.E. Leader, which first appeared in the Transactions of The Hunter Archaeological Society and is reproduced here by kind permission of the Society.

THE KING'S HEAD INN.

All these things were in consonance with the manners, customs, and opinions of the age. There was another association between the publicans and the Church which, from our modern point of view, it may he more agreeable to contemplate.

Several eminent firms of solicitors, and other professional men now practising here, are descended from the sons of innkeepers; and still more remarkable are the contri¬butions which this class made to the ranks of the clergy.

The King's Head especially was a sort of Church nursery; but before giving an account of the parsons, particularly of one parson, that it produced, I have some new light to throw on the house itself.

Now that the Grey Horse has been closed, the King's Head may be confidently asserted to be the oldest of our surviving inns - not in structure, for it has more than once been rebuilt - but the oldest in name and position. And this is true even if we date it from the beginning of the eighteenth century, whence its definite history can be traced, disregarding misty glimpses of its career before that time.

Up to 1902 there stood, at the north-eastern corner of Change Alley, from the time when man's memory goeth not to the contrary, a shop which, to the last, remained faithful to its grocery tradition.

It was one of the last survivors of our old picturesque houses, with over¬hanging gables. Illustrations of it may be seen in Mr. Addy's "Hall of Waltheof," and (much restored) in the frontispiece to Mr. Thomas Winder's “T'Heft an' Blades."

Two hundred years earlier its tenant was John Crook, or Crooke, and next below it was a covered archway, which a swinging signboard proclaimed to be the entrance to the King's Head.

Passing up this passage, beside Crooke's eastern wall, the wayfarer found the doorway of the inn on his right hand, while beyond he had glimpses of a yard bounded by stables, malt rooms, swine hulls, kiln house, barns, a little dwelling-house, and other outbuildings, the whole surroundings being such as may be seen to-day at hostelries in every small country town and village.

Further still were gardens and a bowling green. Remember there was no Change Alley as yet.

Fortunately there have been preserved details from which we can gather a good conception of the planning and furnishing of an early eighteenth century inn. The particulars are gleaned from a schedule of the premises made in 1706, and from an inventory of goods dated 1716.

On the ground floor was a spacious “house'' or " hall -house," as it is once called; a parlour, large and small kitchens, and pantry.

Above, there were a "great chamber" over the shop and entry, a " best chamber," " the Bailiff's chamber,'' and others over the hall and kitchen.

On the second floor was a " gallery " with bedrooms on either side, these being known as " Mr. Reade's closet," the " green chamber," the " Scotchman's chamber," and the " great garrett."

As to furniture, the severity of lang-settle and forms in " the house'' was ameliorated, in the parlour, by " four covered cbaires and one buffett," a cane armchair with four cushions; and (rather unexpectedly) we find it containing also a brass bedstead, with the usual bed-coverings.

Both rooms had curtains and “seeing glass." Puzzling items are "six picktures ceaseres" in the "house," and " six ceasers with two picktures " in the parlour.[1]

Only two of the bedrooms boasted looking-glasses. In what was called "the plaster-floore chamber”, besides bedstead and bedding, were a table, five chairs, looking-glass, and "4 picktures."

The best chamber had a range and fender, bedstead with hangings, bedding, window curtains, two oval tables, one square table, thirteen cane chairs, looking-glass, two buffets, eight "picktures" and " six picktures upon the chimney." Altogether a luxurious apart-ment.

The kitchen displayed thirteen stones of pewter, and eleven further pounds were stored in a closet.

It is curious to note that although, with comic inappropriateness, there was in the kitchen (of all places) a store of a certain bedroom requisite (though there were but 6 - which allows only half a one for each sleeping apartment), there is no trace in any chamber of toilet requisites, either earthenware or metal. Which makes one suspect that any lodger, wishing to wash, was expected to make his ablutions at the yard pump, or the kitchen sink-stone.[2]

Reference is made in "Sheffield in the Eighteenth Century " to lists preserved in the Norfolk Estate Offices of the dues payable by the holders of carefully defined stalls, set up round about the markets and to the top of High Street. It is interesting to find that the right to erect these belonged, like -sittings in the Parish Church, to the free-holders, and were included in the privileges let or leased to their tenants.

Thus the occupier of the King's Head was entitled to "all the stalls and standings in the street from the nether end of Mr. John Crook's shop door to the east end of the house, except one butcher's stall on the upper side of Crooke's door." Trestles and boards for the erection of these on market days and at fairs were stored on the premises.

Whatever it may have been earlier (and there is some reason to think it had suffered decadence), the King's Head was not, at this time, in the first rank. It could not vie with Pegge's, or the Cock, or the Rose and Crown; not until a Master Cutler landlord came in was it honoured by the patronage of the public bodies. The impression one gets from the inventory already quoted is of a market and carriers' and chapmans' inn, an, so far as the townsfolk were concerned, frequented chiefly by those attracted to its bowling-green.

There was no wine, only ale in the cellars, but there are found both pipes of ale and four dozen of “bottells” in the recesses of one of the three bowling-green houses, or “steads”. The two others were apparently arbours wherein were kept twelve pairs of bowls and a “rowler”.

Notes

[1] My efforts to elucidate these items have been unavailing. I have been favoured with several suggestions as to “curtains with seeing-glass” and “picktures ceasares” but none of them appeals to me as satisfactory.

[2] In “The House of Lyme” speaking of temp. 1642, Lady Newton writes:-“ washing was sparsely indulged in ; even in palaces these arrangements, up to the eighteenth century, were of a very primitive description. In some of the State-rooms at Hampton Court one can see what stood for bathroom, a kind of marble containing a sort of basin in which it was just possible to stand.”

The absence of washing appliances in the sleeping apartments of the largest private houses is very noticeable in old inventories, and it is not surprising that they found no place in humbler dwellings. In a list (1787) of the household goods of the Rev. John Dickinson, men¬tioned later in this paper, there are included "a washing stool,",valued at 6d., and " a red shaving basin," 1s. This is typical of the contents of middle-class houses of much later date.

Even after provision was made in the bedrooms of a householder's family, there were none such in the apartments of the domestic servants. Their lavatory was the kitchen sink, as in the homes from which they came. Mr. Squeers' intimation to Nicholas Nickleby that he could not wash because " the pumps froze " (chapter viii), was no stretch of imagination. At the Friends' School at Ackworth, the boys cleaned themselves at a long trough in a cellar, in water used in common.

THE KING’S HEAD LANDLORDS.

So much for the inn. Let us now turn to its inhabitants.

A prominent man in Sheffield some hundred years earlier than the period of which I have been speaking was a certain William Dickinson or Dickenson. He was Bailiff to the Earl of Shrewsbury; was one of the original Capital Burgesses; several times Town Collector; and frequently presided at the annual meetings of freeholders to which the " reckonings " of the Burgery were submitted. The Town Trust was not constituted until after his death.

He was also a publican. In the Capital Burgesses Accounts there are a series of annual payments to "Mr. Bayliffe" for Sacramental wine, and for the annual dinners of the body of which he was a member.

Sometimes these are entered in the name of “Mrs. Bayliffe," who, in 1594, was buried in the odour of sanctity in the chancel of the Parish Church. Soon after that date the Communion wine and dinners were supplied by others, although Dickinson lived until 1606.

The Burgery Accounts for 1572 include among the unpaid rents, "William Dekenson for the taverne stayre, 4d.'' Now it is a long cry from the dates just mentioned to the eighteenth century, and it is certainly un¬sound archaeology to base any assumption on the circumstance that, in 1706, one of the rooms in the King's Head was known as "The Bailiff's Chamber." But if the years are long, tradition is longer, and it is just possible that it was at the King's Head that William Dickinson thought it no shame to profit from the funds of which he was a trustee. This, however, is mere speculation.[1]

Nor have we any explanation of an incident, hereafter to be mentioned, which clearly indicates that some time m the seventeenth century the inn had been in the possession or the occupancy of a family named Webster, to whom, as we shall presently see, it reverted in 1732.

Notes

[1] I In 1575 this William Dickinson built for himself a new house, as is shown by an entry in his MS. Accounts (in the Sheffield Free Library):- "Chardges and expences in aid for the buyldynge of my howse in Sheffield next unto Mrs. Braye, in hoc anno:1545."

Now, this Mrs. Braye was the widow of Thomas Bray (buried 11 Sept., 1570), and her house, sold bv her descendants ¬to Robert

Sorby in 1611, and from his successors to the Waterhouses, was on the site of what is now George Street. It is quite conceivable that Dickinson occupied the King's Head Hotel up to the date of removal to his new premises.

INNS AS CHURCH NURSERIES.

It is not until about 1700 that we get on to firm standing ground as to the occupants of the inn, as I have already described it.

The occupiers from 1705 to 1729 were, in succession, George Tompson, maltster in Colson Croft, Samuel Tompson, his son, and Richard Yeomans. Samuel Tompson married the widow of a certain Thomas Dickinson, who has usually been supposed to have been the earliest of the three landlords, but the records do not substantiate this ; when he married Sarah Hancock, in 1701, he is described as a plumber.

All the evidence is in favour of George Tompson being the first of the trio of occupants. And for my present purpose our interest in him lies mainly in the fact that he was the step grandfather of one clergyman and the grandfather of another. For when his son Samuel married Dickinson's widow she brought with her to the King's Head a small boy, John Dickinson, of whom I shall have much to say presently.

Moreover, George Tompson had a daughter, who married Stephen Newton, of the George, or George and Dragon Inn, a few doors above the King's Head, which George Inn his son, the Rev. Stephen Newton, Rector of Brotherton, inherited. For the moment we will leave little John Dickinson playing about the garden and bowling-green, and receiving a sound education at the Grammar School, in order to complete the story of the King's Head.

Samuel Tompson died at the end of 1716, and in a few short months his widow had taken as her third husband Richard Yeomans, a publican at Buxton, and pack-horse carrier between that place and Tideswell and Sheffield. He died 28 December, 1729, and she six days later, leaving two sons, Richard and William Yeomans, minors.

The guardians of these half-brothers to John Dickinson, put into the King's Head for the unexpired years of the lease Harry Hancock, the brother, or other relative, of Mr. Yeomans.

The late owner of the house, one John Woolfe, of Madely, Shropshire, had left directions that the property was to be “returned” to the family of Mary Webster, late of the same place-for reasons which I am unable to elucidate.

Accordingly in 1732 it was conveyed to Leonard Webster, cutler, who, as soon as the lease had expired, himself entered into possession.

You will find in Mr. Walter Hall's Charters particulars of his sale of the Norfolk Street end of his property, and the making of Change Alley, in 1746/7; through the bowling green. So that by the time he became Master Cutler, in 1748, he had given the King's Head a new frontage to that street, and had probably rebuilt, or largely altered, the inn.

But the point I wish most especially to emphasize is that here again we connect the King's Head with the Church. For Leonard Webster's son, John Webster, and also his grandson, John Webster Hawksley, became clergymen. The former was, in 1756, Senior Wrangler and First Chancellor's Medallist. But there, as has so often happened, his distinctions began and ended. He took orders, but remained unbeneficed, and died young.

[RichardB]

Whatever it may have been earlier (and there is some reason to think it had suffered decadence), the King's Head was not, at this time, in the first rank. It could not vie with Pegge's, or the Cock, or the Rose and Crown; not until a Master Cutler landlord came in was it honoured by the patronage of the public bodies. The impression one gets from the inventory already quoted is of a market and carriers' and chapmans' inn, an, so far as the townsfolk were concerned, frequented chiefly by those attracted to its bowling-green.

The sentance in bold I find the most interesting, all our/my evidence points to Pegge's and the Rose and Crown being one and the same; needs some serious thought. Very serious thought.

Many Thanks Bayleaf, a most interesting and thought provoking piece; imagine, having posted up a bunch of "evidence" (see Talks to the Town Part 3) only to find the great Leader has provided evidence to the contrary.

Leader is implying that Pegge's

The Cock

The Rose and Crown

and the King's Head

are mutually exclusive. I'll type part of that again (for my own benefit) - Pegge's and the Rose and Crown mutually exclusive ... mmmm

Thanks, once again to you and HAS.

I've been reading and re-reading this article for over an hour and what's left of my brain 'urts. The kind of history I like, especially after the aspirin has kicked in

[RichardB]

The occupiers from 1705 to 1729 were, in succession, George Tompson, maltster in Colson Croft, Samuel Tompson, his son, and Richard Yeomans. Samuel Tompson married the widow of a certain Thomas Dickinson, who has usually been supposed to have been the earliest of the three landlords, but the records do not substantiate this ; when he married Sarah Hancock, in 1701, he is described as a plumber.

Colson Croft ???

Coulson Croft in Part 3 ??

Is/was there a Colson Croft ?

Any chance the Link Fairy could get together with Doctor Who and get us a Trade Directory for 1725 ? No, didn't think so ... :rolleyes:

[Bayleaf]

Colson Croft ???

Coulson Croft in Part 3 ??

Is/was there a Colson Croft ?

Any chance the Link Fairy could get together with Doctor Who and get us a Trade Directory for 1725 ? No, didn't think so ...

In part one he does say ,

"The spelling, as usual, varies. We have it, in deeds, as Colson, Colston, Coulson and Coulston. This last, which has become the present form, has the authority of Harrison's Survey (1637), although twice he gives it as Coulstson."

[Ponytail]

King's Head Hotel, Change Alley. s07121

Advertisement for the Royal Mail coach from Sheffield to Louth in the Sheffield Courant. 13th July 1827.

https://www.picturesheffield.com/frontend.php?keywords=Ref_No_increment;EQUALS;y12546&pos=14&action=zoom&id=82702

The coach departed from the King's Head Inn in Change Alley every morning at 9.15. It went to Rotherham, Bawtry, Gainsborough, [Normanton by Spital] and Market Rasen arriving at Louth (Lincolnshire) by 7.30pm.

 

Sarah Woodhead, Advertisement from White's Directory 1856.

 

Thomas Prideaux, Advertisement White's Directory 1862.

 

Nos. 13-15 Change Alley, King's Head Hotel. s14246 

Change Alley, Nos 13-15, King's Head Hotel on left. 

https://www.picturesheffield.com/frontend.php?keywords=Ref_No_increment;EQUALS;s14244&pos=4&action=zoom&id=17148

Junction of High Street and Change Alley, Kings Head Hotel, showing air raid damage. December 1940.

https://www.picturesheffield.com/frontend.php?keywords=Ref_No_increment;EQUALS;s01161&pos=1&action=zoom&id=5019

 

Bombing of Sheffield 12th December 1940, by Chris Hobbs. 

Lists the Public Houses bombed. 

https://www.chrishobbs.com/localpubs1940.htm

 

Extract from articles and letters from The Sheffield and Rotherham Independent 1872/3, edited by Robert Eadon Leader 1875. "Reminiscences, it's Streets and its People." Pages 81 & 82.

Leighton: Let us just take a peep into Change Alley in the lively days when coaches were coming to and going from the "King's' Head," then kept by "Billy Wright." He was one of the old school of landlords, and had universally a good name. Mr. Wright drove the first coach from Sheffield to Glossop; and I had the honour of sitting behind him. It was entering a country which had hitherto been sealed to all but a few sportsmen. The first view of Win Hill and the five miles of the Woodlands from Ashopton to the " Snake" is one of the most beautiful drives in England, and can never be forgotten. On that day, the sun shining brightly, the jovial coachman, the splendid greys, the cheery notes of the bugle, heard for the first time in those solitudes, caused the blood to dance merrily through the veins of all that goodly company, and was a portion of the sunshine of life.

"How sweet in the woodlands, with fleet hound and horn, to waken dull echo and taste the fresh morn."

Another of my coaching experiences from the "King's Head" was taking my seat, more than fifty years ago, for London; and for years afterwards I could remember all the different towns on the route. But I will not dilate now on the pleasures of travelling by coach.

Wragg: Your friend Mr. Wright was not such a model character as you think. About half a century ago, the coach was about to start, but was overloaded, and Wright ordered two additional horses to be put to, telling one of his men to get ready to ride postilion. When he was ready, Mr. Wright complained how long he had been, when the man replied he had been as quick as he could. The master, without more ado, began to horsewhip him. The passengers and lookers on cried shame, and after more delay, another man was sent instead.

Twiss: We can trace back the occupiers of the "King's Head" for a long series of years. Samuel Tompson, who died in 1716, had held it. He, I think, had married the widow of Mr. Dickenson, a previous occupier, and father of the Rev. John Dickenson, an assistant minister at the Parish Church and curate of Ecclesall from 1752 to 1766. Mrs. Tompson took a third husband, Mr. Richard Yeomans, from Buxton, who, when he brought Derbyshire produce to market, had been accustomed to put up at the King's Head. He died in 1729; and the house in 1773 is described as occupied by Henry Hancocks. The next year we find it tenanted by James Kay, or Key, and he kept it for nearly the remainder of the century. After him came "Billy Wright," who retired from the management in 1824, and was succeeded by Mr. Wm. Woodhead, a name which brings us to modern times. He married the daughter of Mr. Wright.

 

Centenary Dinner of the Book Society:

Formed in 1806, King's Head Hotel, Change Alley. 

https://www.readingsheffield.co.uk/tag/sheffield-book-society/

 

[Ponytail]

Extracted from "Grandma's Scrapbook" 

Sheffield Market Cross and the King's Head in the early 18th Century. 

My Grandma was an avid Scrapbooker and "stuck in" this newspaper cutting from The Star probably late 1930''s/1940's.