The Public Houses of Barwick Village The New Inn Back to the Main Historical Society page
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The Public Houses of Barwick Village
The New Inn


from The Barwicker No.94
June 2009




The New Inn (on the right) about 1900


The “New Inn” public house stands at the junction of Leeds Road, Main Street, Long Lane and Chapel Lane at Barwick. In the past it was ideally located to catch weary travellers heading to Barwick from the west and the south as well as providing refreshment to village locals. It is quite clearly not a purpose built public house looking more like a row of cottages converted at some time into the now popular drinking establishment.

When did this happen and actually how “New” is “The New Inn”? It has certainly never been new in my lifetime or my fathers. Even my great grandfather, Stephen Sheldon Teal, living in the village in the 1940's would have not known it as new or spoken with anyone then living who did. To find people using it as new we must go back 170 years, to the 1830's. To a time when William IV and then a young Queen Victoria were on the throne and most villagers would be engaged in farming or working in the local collieries. We must go back to the Beer Act of 1830 and the explosion in the number of Beerhouses which followed the passing of this Act of Parliament described in a previous Barwicker article (No.93 March 2009) about the “William IV” beerhouse.

The buildings appear to be older than the pub but exactly when they were constructed in not known. In 1768 part of the site was occupied by William Tipling, by 1800 David Strother and Barbara his wife occupied one part, Renton Haiste and Thomas Waite another and William Copley and Ann his wife yet another.

On the 27th October 1825 Edward Wales, a linen draper of Leeds bought part of the site which was copyhold under the Manor of Barwick and Scholes and which included a house, land and a well. The well was shared with two other adjacent properties who had to pay two thirds of its upkeep or else they would lose the right to use it. They also had a right to go over the site to get to the Town Street of Barwick with ashes and manure, but only between the 1st May and the 1st June each year. Edward let the property to William Gough, a gardener.

On the 26th October 1830 Richard Hewitt bought another part of the property and during the 1830s opened a beerhouse on the site. Richard was born in Barwick on the 20th December 1796 the son of John Hewitt a miner. He married Jane Ward in 1823 and had three children. Jane died in 1840 aged just 36 and Richard remarried Harriet Dawson of Scholes in 1842. They had one daughter together, Jane, baptised at All Saint Church, Barwick on the 25th March 1843. Richard is described until the 1830s as a labourer. In 1834 he appears in a local directory as a retailer of beer in Barwick and from 1838 as a beerhouse keeper. He appears to have left the Parish after the death of his first wife and when he married Harriet on the 26th April 1842 at Leeds Parish Church (St. Peters) he is described as a labourer of Holbeck. Whether the beerhouse closed during this period or was run by someone else is not known. By the following March however he is back at Barwick described as beerhouse keeper in the Parish Registers.

On the 29th April 1851 Richard bought the adjoining property from Edward Wales and, no doubt, extended the beerhouse. Later descriptions in property deeds describe that the “premises are now thrown together and form the New Inn in Barwick”. Examination of the exterior of the property today would indicate the pub is made up from a number of separate properties.

The earliest written reference to the name “New Inn” is from the 1861 census when Richard and Harriet with a daughter from his first marriage, Elizabeth, and the 18 year Jane are all living in the property. Richard died on the 24th February 1870 and his will written on the 18th July 1868 states “I give and devise all my copyhold cottages or tenements known by the sign of the New Inn in Barwick in Elmet….in trust….to my wife Harriet to receive rents while alive then to be sold”. Harriet died in 1878 and the inn was bought from the trustees of the will by her daughter Jane Hewitt who then ran the business in her own right. In the 1881 census she is listed as unmarried beerseller, aged 38, helped by Sarah Wilson, also unmarried, a 50 year old general domestic servant.

James Haley a 39 year old agricultural labourer born in Bramley was also visiting. By the 1891 census Jane is shown as a licensed victualler and James Haley is still resident described as a border aged 49, living on his own means (usually savings or an annuity).

On the 12th January 1898 Jane made her will leaving everything she owned included “The New Inn” to James Haley, the border who had lived with her at least 17 years. She died on the 10th April of that year aged 55 and was buried in the churchyard at All Saints, Barwick. Six weeks later James Haley, now the Inn keeper at the “New Inn” married the Barwick widow Annie Cason Ellis (nee Williams) again at All Saints. It is difficult to pass judgement on what happened next as the records have not survived or as yet have not come to light. The Hewitt family, likely expecting a share of the estate, possibly upset by the timing of James’s marriage to Annie challenged the validity of the will. The grounds for the challenge are not known but a court case entitled “Haley against Hewitt” was held in Wakefield on the 20th December 1898 when a Judge ruled that the will was indeed valid. The total value of the estate was £1,027 15s 8d with the full amount going to James.

James then moved with his new wife Annie to live in Scholes, he is shown as a retired publican in the 1901 census. The “New Inn” was let to tenants with Charles Wrigglesworth and his wife Sarah running it in 1901. James died in 1906 and his widow Annie sold the inn on the 11th October 1906 to the John Smiths Tadcaster Brewery Company. This large brewing company were buying inns which were then supplied by their brewery at Tadcaster and rented to tenants. In 1913 they paid the Lord of Manor, Colonel Gascoigne of Lotherton, £135 5s 2d to free the property from Manorial restriction and it then became freehold. Charles Wrigglesworth ran the inn until the 29th December 1914 paying a rental of £25 per annum.

The licensees and notable events of the twentieth century were:

On the 7th February 1961 Evelyn Tyson applied to the Skyrack Licensing Court for a full Publicans License, it was supported by a petition signed by 257 customers. The application was successful meaning the “New Inn” could sell spirits and wine as well as beer for the first time in 130 years.




The New Inn in 2005


The John Smith Tadcaster Brewery Company was taken over by the Courage Brewery in the 1970s who sold all their public houses in 1991 to the Inntrepreneur Pub Company who subsequently sold the “New Inn” to Unique Pub Properties Limited in 1999.

It certainly remains a “Unique” public house, a jumble of rooms at different levels with the smallest serving bar or hatch I’ve ever seen. Perhaps the name “New” is now misleading, it has a long and proud history, should it be renamed the “The Old Inn”?

DAVID TEAL
Sources:
- Barwick in Elmet and Scholes Manorial Records
- 1841 – 1901 Census Returns
- 1909 Valuation Office Records
- The Skyrack Courier
- Probate Records – Her Majesty’s Court Service
- All Saints Church, Barwick in Elmet, Parish Registers
- St. Peter Church, Leeds, Parish Registers
- Local Directories
- Paul Jennings – “The Local” A History of The English Pub
- Land Registry of England and Wales
- Skyrack Petty Sessions – Registers of Alehouse Licenses


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