Citylife in Lichfield October 2021

The Anglesey Curborough Road The Anchor at Streethay The Anchor Abnalls Lane
The Lost Pubs
of Lichfield
Anchor and Anglesey
By Jono Oates
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In the early 1800s, with a population of just 5,000 people, there
were nearly 90 public houses, or beer houses, in Lichfield city –
an average of one pub for very 55 people! Over the decades the
population has rapidly increased, to over 30,000 people today, but
the number of pubs has dramatically decreased. Some of the
former pubs have retained their original buildings and are easily
recognisable as to their former usage but others have either been
demolished or have been completely transformed.
The Anchor Inn at Streethay is one of the more recent pubs to be lost
from the Lichfield pub scene, it is now mainly housing. However, it is not
the only Lichfeldian pub with that name to have been demolished. The
original Anchor was on the Stafford Road, later Beacon Street, at the
junction of Abnalls Lane. This pub opened in the early 1830s and became
a private house in 1891, although by 1893 it was listed as a pub again, and
the landlord was Ernest Smith. In the September of that year Ernest was
taken to court for the offence of selling intoxicating liquor to Charles
Davies in breach of the Licensing Act. PC Hollings had seen Smith pass a
number of bottles of ale to Davies in mid-morning, outside of the
licensed hours, from the back garden of the pub, and Davies was then
selling the ale on to his friends. When approached by the policeman,
Smith and his wife attempted to bribe him with the offer of free drinks,
saying that ‘There’s only three of us here, and no-one else will know’. This
clumsy bribe failed though and Smith was charged with the offence at
court, the magistrates fining him £1 and 11 shillings and 6d.
The Streethay Anchor opened in the 1850s and has certainly seen
some tragedies take place over the years. In April 1863 pub landlord, and
wheelwright, John Chamberlain, committed suicide by hanging himself in
a barn at the back of the inn, having felt unwell and low-spirited for
several months. Just before Christmas, 1893, Arthur Griffiths, son of
Anchor landlord James Griffiths was in court, charged with affray at
another lost Lichfield pub, the Trent Valley Hotel. Arthur had been
ejected from the pub for being drunk and disorderly and PC Murphy was
called after he became violent and ‘riotous’. Arthur was fined 10s and
ordered to pay 18s in court costs. During World War Two, in November
1941, landlord Henry Francis Irwin, who had served with distinction in
the Great War, was returning home from a holiday on the South Coast
when he was found dead in a train carriage after it had pulled in to
Lichfield Trent Valley station, he was aged just 49, and his death was
declared as being from natural causes.
The Anglesey pub that most Lichfeldians remember was on the
Curborough Road but, as in the case of the Anchor, there had been
another pub with the same name located on St John Street at the
junction of the Birmingham Road. Originally called the Marquis of
Anglesey, it opened around 1817 and was named after Henry Paget, the
Earl of Uxbridge (later Marquis of Anglesey) who had served under the
Duke of Wellington at the battle of Waterloo where he had lost his leg
to a French cannon ball. It’s believed that the inn was built at the location
at which the city corporation and citizens of Lichfield gathered on his
return to Lichfield after the battle. A party of gentleman gathered at the
Anglesey in June 1836 to celebrate the house warming of the landlady,
Mrs Richardson, where they enjoyed a ‘sumptuous dinner’ provided by
the hostess and that several excellent songs were sung which ‘greatly
added to the hilarity of the evening’.
The pub continued until 1938 when it closed and its licensed name
was transferred across to the ‘new’ Anglesey Arms on the Curborough
Road in April of that year. The pub was built by well-known Lichfield
builder JR Deacon, the brewery was Ind Coope and Allsopp and the first
landlord was Horace Wilson, who went on to become the licensee of a
number of pubs in Lichfield.
Like many pubs the Anglesey had a Darts Team and in August 1960
their team won the Challenge Cup that year, presented by the President
of the Lichfield and District Darts League, Councillor Bernard Garman.
Licensee of the Anglesey, David Jones, was also thanked for his
presentation of a cup to the league for the winners of the doubles’
competition.
The Anglesey Arms on the Curborough Road closed in 2013 and is
now a Co-operative store. The original Marquis of Anglesey became the
Lichfield Labour Exchange during World War Two and was eventually
demolished to make way for the extension of the Birmingham Road/St
John Street junction.
The Anchor and Anglesey are just two of the many pubs that have
closed in and around the city, and I’ll be telling the story of more of
Lichfield’s Lost Pubs in future editions.
*Vintage photographs courtesy of the St Mary’s Photographic Collection.
Sources: The British Newspaper Archives; The Old Pubs of Lichfield by John
Shaw; Lichfield Pubs by Neil Coley
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