SEARCH for Pub, Hotel or Club..... CONTACT US

When Saint Peter sees him coming,
He will leave the Gates ajar;
For He knows he's had his Hell on earth,
Has the man behind the bar

A short history of ale, beer and the pub

Search for pub, club or hotel

This is an on going project, more information being added regularly as the archived copies of the Newmarket Journal and other local newspapers are scanned and put on line. Tony Pringle, aided and abetted by Peter Norman and David Rippington, having spent much time, over many years, researching the old pubs of Newmarket, gathering snippets of information from other members such as the late Les Jewel, Joan Shaw, Mary Basham and latterly Dr.Rachel Wood, decided it was time to bring all the data together in one place. This is it.... Excuses first....When it comes to clubs there may well be some not included. As with restaurants, it is not always possible to ascertain licensing particulars. The exact status of each establishment is not always known, some may have been public houses as we know them or mere beerhouses, some "real hotels", some glorified lodging houses or indeed off licences. The history of most clubs is usually quite vague, their records being very much harder to find. It has not been possible to ascertain the dates of all licence changes, the entries showing dates and licensees' name in most cases can only show there is a public reference to that person at those premises at the time. One insurmountable omission is the lack of census information for the St Mary's side of town in 1851. Somewhere in the mists of time this was lost or destroyed. All Saints side record did survive, but there was little that side of town at that time. Two other factors must delay completion of this task A..The Newmarket Journal archived copies are on just coming online, but despite the limitations of OCR (optical character recognition), it will save 150 years worth of hard copy to read ! B..Since much of the time Newmarket was included in Cambridgeshire for records, it is to that County Records Office we must frequently turn. Being of the "belt and braces brigade", a book will also be compiled (eventually) so that there is a hard copy of at least one stage of the project. Hopefully credit can be given for the images presented here, but as the photographs were collected by several persons, over very many years, the provenance of many is completely unknown. Even amongst ourselves, it cannot always be said for sure whether a photograph was given to Tony by Peter, or vice versa (and even then the origin was probably unrecorded). The majority though would have come from Peter Norman's vast collection of local photographs who also has images of the Newmarket postcards collected by an ex native of Newmarket,the late Roger Newman. Many may be found on other websites, but were acquired by those mentioned above before websites had been invented. However our thanks go to the Newmarket Journal and the Old Newmarket website for their assistance at all times. Luckily most of our images were shot long ago and we believe out of copyright, but we do try to add a courtesy "thank you" where we do know the donor. The Licensing Act of 2003 made drastic changes to the licensing for the sale of alcohol. The power was removed from the local Magistrates Court and given to the Local Authority. Personal licences, premises licences and club premises certificates are granted by licensing authorities under the Act, which generally will be the local authority for the area in which the premises are situated or, in the case of personal licences, in which the individual applicant is normally resident. The premises licence remains in force until surrendered or removed, but a fee is charged each year. The personal licence remains with that person and lasts ten years and is renewable and can be used in any licenced premises. A person holding a personal licence must be present on the premises when alcohol is on sale, meaning more then one licenced person is likely to be employed by that outlet. CONTACT US admin@newmarketpubshistory.co.uk If this email link does not work you may need to copy and paste it into your email address WARNING All possible sources of information have been explored, but directories are not always the most accurate. It can be found at times that a directory places a publican in a pub for several years after his death. The census, 1939 register and licensing records and registers are better trusted sources.