Railway Inn, Nailbridge. (General)

by BeamanReed, Monday, December 31, 2018, 12:29 (2156 days ago) @ Jefff

Railway Inn, Nailbridge:

Richard REED (born 11.11.1845, Ruardean) took over as landlord of the Railway Inn at Nailbridge in around 1912. The Barleycorn Inn, Cinderford, where he had worked previously, had been shut down in around 1911 under the Licensing Act 1904, which aimed to close "unnecessary" pubs by compensating the owner and license holder.

In the Gloucester Journal (04.11.1911) there is a mention of the Railway Inn in the regular report on the Littledean Petty Sessions. There had been a legal dispute between Sarah Elizabeth Dunbley (probably a misspelling of DUNKLEY) over the landlordship, and she was being moved out in favour of a temporary landlord, Arthur RAVENHILL. Richard REED is not mentioned at that point, but the owner of the Barleycorn was Francis WINTLE, who is also listed in the Gloucestershire Pubs Database as the owner of the Railway Inn in 1903.

Arthur RAVENHILL was landlord of the pub by 09.12.1911 as he turns up in Petty Sessions (source: Gloucestershire Journal again) to answer a charge of permitting drunkenness on the premises. The case was dismissed, but there is a lot of detail in there as two other people are charged at the same time for doing various things they shouldn't have been doing, at the Railway Inn in November and December 1911.

There are a few lists of landlords of the Railway Inn around online. Richard REED's last mention seems to be in 1927 (original source unknown), but he died in 1928, so his time as landlord must have ended in either 1927 or 1928. My version of the list of landlords (based on newspaper mentions and other people's research on this site) looks like this:

1891 Albert DUNKLEY (source: 1891 census)
1901 Albert DUNKLEY (source: 1901 census)
1903 Sarah DUNKLEY (source: Gloucestershire Pubs Database)
1906 Sarah DUNKLEY (source: Gloucestershire Pubs Database)
1911 Sarah Elizabeth DUNKLEY (or DUMBLEY/DUNBLEY?) (source: 1911 Petty Sessions)
1911 Arthur RAVENHILL (source: 1911 Petty Sessions)
1913 Richard REED (source: Gloucestershire Pubs Database)
1927 Richard REED (source: Gloucestershire Pubs Database)

Awkwardly, there was a Railway Inn (built about 1900) in Bilson Green, directly opposite Cinderford Railway Station, which often comes up in searches. This seems to have been a "better" pub than the one in Nailbridge, based on the descriptions I've seen of both of them. It was discussed in the closure case for the Barleycorn in 1911 (from the Petty Sessions report), as the two pubs were close enough to potentially take business of one another. The Railway Inn at Cinderford appears on the 1901 Ordinance Survey map as a hotel.