History of the Albert Hotel at Tamworth in the county of Staffordshire. Research is augmented with photographs, details of licensees, stories of local folklore, census data, newspaper articles and a genealogy connections section for those studying their family history.

Albert Hotel

© Copyright. Images supplied by Digital Photographic Images

The first photograph in the gallery above shows the Albert Hotel around 1905 [enlarged below]. Note that the trees, probably planted at the time Albert Street was laid out, are well established by this date. A well dressed man appears to be addressing someone inside a first floor window but there is somebody standing on the step - the wife of the publican perhaps? There is a lot of activity in the street and plenty of horse dung! It's a splendid scene and helps to explain why Albert Road was such a desirable place to live in the Victorian and Edwardian era.

A rare image, the second photograph shows the pub in the livery of Ind Coope and Allsopp Ltd. The third photograph in the gallery and a larger image below date from around 1982 when the pub was operated by Ansell's Brewery of Aston, Birmingham. Ind Coope and Allsopp Ltd. merged with Ansell's and Tetley Walker in 1961 to form Allied Breweries. The changes in ownership of the Albert Hotel has resulted in a variety of ales being sold over the counter. In the new millennium, the pub's owner and operator was the Union Pub Company, a branch of Wolverhampton and Dudley Breweries Ltd.

Although it is now possible to walk into the pub and buy ales produced in all regions of the UK, the most exciting period for drinking beer in the Albert Hotel was in the mid-19th century when the publican brewed his own ales in the back yard. A walk along the side of the pub reveals some of the old stabling block and other outbuildings where the homebrewed ales were produced. How long the first licensee, William Spencer, maintained the tradition of homebrewed ales at the Albert Hotel is not clear. Certainly, there was the temptation of buying consistent quality beer from the nearby brewery [marked on the map below] established in Albert Road by Thomas White in 1860.

Born in Bolehall in 1822, Thomas White was formerly a cabinet maker and established a small business in Bolebridge Street. His wife may have died in childbirth because he was a widow when the census enumerator recorded him as a widow living with his two year-old daughter Ann. When he moved to Albert Road to start his new business as a maltster and brewer, he was accompanied by his sister Catherine. The beers produced by Thomas White proved popular and within a decade he had a small workforce engaged at the site. He re-married in the 1860's; his wife Mary Ann hailed from Husbands Bosworth in Leicestershire. The profitable business enabled the couple to employ servants in the house.

Born on the Isle of Skye, the wholesale wine and spirits merchant Norman McFie established a business next to the brewery and shared part of the brewery yard with Thomas White. Nearing the end of his working life, Thomas White went into partnership with John Combe, a younger brewer from Gloucestershire. By 1898 the business was trading as White and Combe. Thomas White died in 1901 but the brewery continued until the First World War. Indeed, John Combe was known to purchase pubs in order to develop a tied estate. In an auction held by Messrs. Winterton and Son in July 1906 he bought the freehold of the Seven Stars, an old pub situated on Watling Street at Wall. The company paid £1,055,0s.0d. Prior to this, John Combe had acquired the Green Man Inn at Clifton Campville. There is a record of C. Paulton brewing in Albert Road in 1876 but little is known of this enterprise.

Albert Road formed part of the 'new' Tamworth development of the mid-19th century and competed with Victoria Road as the main route in and out of the town to and from the railway station. Erected in 1847, the station initially served the London and North West Railway's Trent Valley line. Indeed, this company laid sidings just beyond the plot on which the Albert Hotel stands. These terminated in a goods shed that was just a stone's throw from the pub. The Midland Railway also built a goods shed on the opposite side of the road where Albert Road meets Victoria Road. Consequently, it's a fair bet that, in those days, the tap rooms of the Tweeddale Arms and the Albert Hotel would be chocker with railwaymen. The two pubs also vied for custom from those arriving at the station looking for refreshment and accommodation.

It was a former publican of the Tweeddale Arms who became the first licensee of the Albert Hotel in 1864. Born in 1826 at Clifton Campville, William Spencer kept the brand-new Hotel with his Gloucestershire-born wife Mary. Although the street had already been named Albert Road, William Spencer named the hotel in honour of Prince Albert of Saxe-Coborg and Goth who had recently died. A visitor to Tamworth shortly after the opening of the railway station, Prince Albert married his cousin Queen Victoria in 1840. This was three years after she had been called to the British throne following the death of her uncle King William IV. Albert and Victoria had nine children. He played an influential role on the queen who was very submissive and hardly made a decision without consulting him. In this role he replaced Lord Melbourne, the Prime Minister in the early years of her reign. He was a keen supporter of the sciences and helped to organise the Crystal Palace Exhibition in 1851. He died at Windsor Castle in 1861 from typhoid fever and Victoria went into a self-imposed seclusion for the next decade.

After a few years at the Albert Hotel, William and Mary Spencer went on to run a large hotel in Nuneaton and were succeeded by William Henry Eastland. The hotel proprietor hailed from the Kent village of Lamberhurst. After receiving a sound education at Hawkhurst, William Eastland came to Tamworth and worked as an assistant chemist at Frederick Ruff's pharmacy in George Street. He met and married his wife Emma who was born in New Basford, home of the famous Shipstone's brewery. The couple's daughter Florence was born after their arrival at the Albert Hotel. William Eastland employed two servants to keep the hotel running smoothly. However, he'd developed itchy feet by the end of the 1870's and left the licensed trade. He moved with his family to Stafford where he started a new chapter in his career working as a commercial traveller.

The new publican at the beginning of the 1880's was Edward Canning. His father was Charles Canning who, with his partner John Gibbs, founded a quarry and terracotta works in 1847 at Glascote. The company employed around 300 people by the end of the 19th century. The firm supplied the decorative building materials for many famous buildings including the Royal Albert Hall and the Natural History Museum. The company's products were used in ecclesiastic, commercial and domestic architecture. In addition to many houses in and around Tamworth, the company's products were used in the construction of prominent buildings such as Lloyd's Bank and the building currently used by the Halifax Building Society, both in George Street.

Edward Canning's tenure at the Albert Hotel was brief. He fell in love with and married Sarah Jane Bradley, daughter of William Bradley, licensee of the neighbouring Tweeddale Arms. Following William Bradley's premature death, his wife Mary took over the licence of the Tweeddale Arms. However, despite having the experience of running the Queen's Head in Nuneaton's Church Street, her two daughters moved into the Tweeddale Arms where they managed the pub as a family unit. Although Mary Bradley retained the licence, son-in-law Edward Canning was appointed manager. With his wife Sarah Jane dying in 1891, Edward died of a broken heart in the following year.

John Bradbury held the licence of the Albert Hotel for a brief spell before the arrival of Ambrose Robotham. The son of a woolstapler, he had grown up on Lichfield Street next to the White Horse Hotel on the corner of Silver Street. His childhood sweetheart was Clementina Brookes, daughter of the hotel's owner and publican. They married in June 1874 and, together, the happy couple kept the White Horse Hotel for over a decade. They had three sons before Clementina died prematurely in 1888. It is likely that widower Ambrose Robotham moved to the Albert Hotel to forget this tragedy and to make a fresh start. After a few years he did find happiness again and, marrying a Handsworth-born woman called Mary Ann, he moved to a new life in Melton Mowbray where he managed a farm.

Ambrose Robotham was succeeded by George Rose. Born in 1853 in the Black Country town of Darlaston, he and his wife had previously kept a pub in Oldswinford near Stourbridge. Agnes Rose had taken a rather circuitous route to the Albert Hotel. She was born in Tamworth and, growing up in Kettlebrook, met the Black Countryman who was living near the Bull's Head at Two Gates. George's father had moved to Watling Street in search of work as a clay miner. The family lived in the old Co-operative store. An early endeavour to establish a co-operative society on the corner of Tamworth Road was attempted in 1872 but the venture failed.

By the time George and Agnes Rose arrived at the Albert Hotel the couple had eight children. And just to make sure there was little room to swing a cat in the upstairs accommodation, they employed a live-in servant. As tenants for the Lichfield Brewery, the Rose family remained at the pub throughout the Edwardian period. This brings us back to the first photograph in the gallery - is that George Rose shouting up to one of his children upstairs and is that his wife Agnes on the front doorstep?
Having attempted to identify the people in the first photograph, we can now turn our attention to the second image in the gallery and explain how the building came to have the livery of Ind Coope and Allsopp Ltd.

From the time of George and Agnes Rose being tenants, the Albert Hotel was owned by the Lichfield Brewery Co. Ltd. This company was registered in July 1869 to acquire two brewing operations in Lichfield - J. A. Griffith & Company and the Lichfield Malting Co. Ltd. The first of these enterprises was established by the wine merchants John and Arthur Griffith. The brewery, located in Beacon Street behind Cathedral House, was operational by 1847. The company had two malthouses in the city, one of which can still be seen next to the railway line close to Upper St. John Street. Located in Tamworth Street, the Lichfield Malting Co. Ltd. was founded in 1864 by John, Henry, and William Gilbert. Following the merger of these two firms, a new brewery was erected on the west side of Upper St. John Street, the offices of which still stands next to the railway bridge. Often experiencing trading difficulties to the extent of being reconstructed in 1890, the company was eventually acquired by Samuel Allsopp and Sons in 1930. The sale included the estate of 182 public houses which, of course, included the Albert Hotel.

George Rose was succeeded by Jesse Harman as licensee of the Albert Hotel. He remained at the pub for only a year, possibly because in October 1915 he was convicted of selling alcoholic liquor during prohibited hours on a Sunday. Found guilty he was fined £5.0s.0d. The fine was small considering the fact that selling alcohol out of hours during the war was deemed to be a very serious offence. In the year that Jesse Harman was convicted Lloyd-George, then Chancellor of the Exchequer made his famous declaration that "Drink is doing more damage in the war than all the German submarines put together...We are fighting Germany, Austria and Drink, and the greatest of all these deadly foes is Drink." One of the main problems for government and local authorities was how to tackle the drunken state of munitions workers on whom they depended for the continued supply to France. The trouble with the workers was that they were earning more money than ever before. Interest in the war in the early months was minimal and with little to do but drink that's exactly what they did. Several Defence of the Realm Acts were passed to restrict the hours that public houses were allowed to open. Sunday was particularly restricted in order to reduce the traditional Monday absenteeism. It was not until 1921 that pubs were allowed to open eight hours a day but not during the afternoon. This regime stayed in place until August 1st 1988 when all-day opening was finally restored.

During the Second World War, the Albert Hotel was kept by Alfred Burdett. A former miner at Kingsbury Colliery, he took over the licence on July 17th 1939. He died in 1953 aged 71.

The first licensee to keep the pub under the ownership of Wolverhampton and Dudley Breweries Ltd. was Carole Cartwright. The brewery carried out substantial structural alterations to the building in 1996, the year that the old interior layout vanished.

Kate Casey arrived in 2002 and took over the licence on January 21st 2003. She is featured above in the gallery, along with Bev Rolan who was working behind the bar in 2006.
© Copyright. Posted on 14th December 2011
Images supplied by Digital Photographic Images
and Staffordshire Past-Track.

1864 - William Spencer
1872 - William Henry Eastland
1880 - Edward Walter Canning
1884 - John Bradbury
1888 - Ambrose Robotham
1896 - 1915 George Rose
1915 - 1916 Jesse Harman
1916 - 1926 - William Ashwood
1926 - Agnes Emma Ashwood
1939 - Albert Burdett
1967 - 1974 James Wesley Hine
1974 - 1975 Derrick Alfred Grove
1975 - 1982 Abraham Millard
1982 - 1995 Dorothy Millard
1995 - 97 Carole Rosemary Cartwright
1997 - 2003 Paula Lesley Hutchings
2003 - 2004 Catherine Jane Daniels
2004 - Catherine Jane Casey

If you have a genealogy story or query regarding this pub you can contact me and I will post it here in addition to including your message within the website pages for Staffordshire Genealogy.

Tamworth Borough Council

"If I ever marry a wife, I'll marry a landlord's daughter, For then I may sit in the bar And drink cold brandy and water.”
Charles Lamb