THE WRESTLERS INN. ("Hardy's"*3,1992)
In 1743 the Wrestler's Inn was purchased by Samuel
Killitt, a merchant, who becoming
bankrupt, it was sold by the assignees of his estate to Job Smith. It was then
the most considerable hostelry in the town, and in 1764 he established what he
called a new flying-post coach on steel springs, carrying six inside
passengers. This was apparently to encourage visitors from Norwich.
Ives Senior, in his Journal, frequently mentions the
Wrestlers where occasionally he had a very good supper.
Job Smith died in 1784, Mary his wife having died in
1779, and in 1787 the heirs by law of Smith,
who were very difficult to locate, conveyed the property to John Suckling,
Vintner. Suckling himself died in 1799, leaving the "Wrestlers" to
Sarah his widow. In the following year an incident occurred which greatly
contributed to the celebrity of the hotel.
Nelson filled Europe with his fame by victory at
Aboukir (14th. March 1797), and on the 6th November 1800, landed at Yarmouth,
accompanied by William and Lady Hamilton, proceeding to the Wrestlers. His
return had been anxiously expected by all England when he
arrived in the Yarmouth Roads. The weather was stormy, and the coxswain of the Admiral's
barge hesitated to undertake the
responsibility of a landing, but Nelson would not wait. The townsfolk, frantic with delight,
received him on landing with loud cheers, and taking the horses from a carriage
which was ready for his use, drove him
triumphantly to Church Plain. Standing
at an open upper window of the Wrestlers and surveying the vociferous multitude
below him, Nelson, much gratified, exclaimed, "I am myself a Norfolk man,
and I glory in being so." Soon afterwards the Mayor and the Corporation
attended upon Nelson, and presented him with the Freedom of the Borough. Accompanied by the Mayor and Corporation, by
Admiral Dixon and all the naval
officers then on shore, and by many of the principal inhabitants, Nelson
repaired to the Parish Church, giving thanks to Almighty God for having preserved him amidst so many
dangers, permitting him to return in
safety to his native land. When Nelson
entered St. Nicholas's Church the organ played 'See The Conquering Hero
Comes'. The troops then in the town
assembled on the plain before the Hotel, salutes were fired, bands played, and
every means used to express the joy of the inhabitants and their admiration for
the great Captain. In the evening
Nelson dined with the Mayor, Samuel Barker Esq., and at night there was a great
firework display. On the following day
Nelson wrote to the Admiralty expressing his desire to serve again immediately.
Nelson had been away from England for a period of two years and eight months. He had been ordered home from
the Mediterranean by Lord Keith*4. He
had been in command of the blockade of Malta, although much distracted by
having the Hamiltons on board. He and the Hamiltons travelled across Europe from Florence, stopping in Vienna a
month due to the poor health of Sir William Hamilton (they left Florence on
11th. July). At a ball in Vienna, Haydn and other musicians played, but Lady
Hamilton ignored them, gambling at cards, winning some £300-400. After Vienna,
they spent a week in Dresden, and reached Hamburg on 21st. October, having
stopped every night on the way. On 31st. they embarked on the mail-packet, and
after a stormy passage, landed at Yarmouth on 6th.November. The whole
party after their short stay in
Yarmouth, went to London, where they arrived on the 8th. Emma Hamilton was at this time some 7 months
pregnant to Nelson, carrying his daughter Horatia. The Yeoman Cavalry under the command of Captain Sir E. K. Lacon
had the honour of escorting Nelson out
of the town. Before his departure he
left fifty pounds with the Mayor, to be distributed amongst the "necessitous
poor", and a request was made by Mrs. Suckling to allow her to call the
Hotel in future the "Nelson Arms". "That would be absurd",
said the hero, "seeing that I have but one", and "Nelson's
Hotel" was substituted.
Nelson was in
Yarmouth again on 7th. March 1801, when he came ashore from the
"St.George", a three decker, and his flagship for the time. There
were six hundred troops on board, that had embarked at Spithead. Nelson came ashore to visit the
Commander in Chief, Sir Hyde Parker, who was staying in town with his young
wife (Parker was then an old man). The couple had arranged to give a great Ball
in the town on 13th.March. Preparations were in hand for the Battle of
Copenhagen. Parker and Nelson, at least at first, were not on good terms: Nelson arranged that the Admiralty despatch them on 12th. March, and they sailed
with a fleet comprising fifteen ships-of-the-line, and two fifties*5, as well
as frigates, sloops-of-war, brigs, cutters, fire-ships, and seven bomb-vessels.
Nelson was at this time aged 42 years (Battle of Copenhagen, April 1st. 1801).
Suckling's widow married -in 1801- William Wood, and went to reside at Horsley
Down in Surrey. In 1803 "Nelson's Hotel", i.e. the
"Wrestler's" was purchased by William Rowe, and after many subsequent
changes of ownership, became in 1817 vested in John Atkinson, on whose death it
was sold and divided. Part of the Wrestler's was then re-converted in Palmer's
time into a liquor shop called the"Anchor of Hope". The war-time photograph shows the
Wrestler's very much as it looks today, though one of the pilasters there now
apparently came from Steward's in the Market Place after that was demolished by
a bomb. There were however the old
pilasters still present in the Wrestler's Inn after the war and another
building on the west side in the right of the photograph- (E. J. Woodcock)- the
bottom part of which is all boarded up with corrugated iron in the photograph.
Presumably the buildings of D. Yerrell and perhaps
those to the left of that also, were originally all part of the Wrestler's, and
Yerrell's may well have been that which was converted into a liquor store in
the time of Palmer.
North of Row Nineteen, fronting Church Plain, says
Palmer, stood a large and stately house demolished in 1868, which in the
previous century had been the property and residence of the Wards, a family of
great wealth and influence in Yarmouth.
This house would appear to be that which became Lacon's Brewery. The
east front is shown in the line drawing of 1700. Palmer says it was demolished in 1868; this would then be when
the new brewery was built. The first
of the Wards who
settled in Yarmouth was Toby Ward, the great- great-grandson of John Ward of
Kirby Bedon, who lived in about 1363.
Sir Edward Ward of Bixley was created a Baronet in 1660, and he married
Susannah, the only child of William Randel, a very rich merchant of Yarmouth,
and all his wealth came to her, not only increasing Sir Edward's Estate, but
also administering to the further improving of the splendour of his seat at
Postwick by beautifying it with canal, gardens and courtyards. Susan the only
surviving daughter of Sir Edward Ward, married in 1764, Neil, the third Earl of
Roseberry, and on the death of her brother, Sir Randel,
she inherited the large property of her family, including the Postwick Estate,
which still belongs to the Earldom (says Palmer). William Randel died in 1719 aged 55 and lay buried in St.
Nicholas Church, under a slab which bore his Arms.
It so happens that one of the houses which I went to
look at, when it was for sale in 1981 was the Roseberry's house in Postwick. At
that time it was for sale with some twelve acres of land, and was owned by an
Architect in Norwich. The rooms were
rather small and square, but had been opened into each other through square archways.
At that time it was for sale at £120,000, and seeming somewhat overpriced, we did not consider it further. With regard to the Yarmouth family of Wards,
Toby Ward married Thomaseen, daughter of Edward Fisher of Great Witchingham,
and had a son and heir, Thomas Ward, who left three sons, Augustin, Joseph and
Edward. On the breaking out of Civil
War, Geoffrey Ward, Joseph Ward, Richard Ward and Dionis Ward, brought in money
and plate for the use of Parliament. In
1648 Geoffrey Ward signed the Solemn League and Covenant, and in 1850 filled
the office of Bailiff, and was re-elected in 1661. Ward by then owned the
brewery and this business then absorbed two others at least, one of which had
belonged to John Victor on the east side of Middlegate Street. George Ward
filled the office of Bailiff in 1671 with Sir Thomas Meadowe, and they had the
honour of entertaining at dinner, King Charles Second and his retinue.
George Ward was constituted the first Mayor of
Yarmouth, by the Charter granted in 1684.
George Ward, the younger, filled the office of Mayor in 1728, and in
1734 he contributed ten pounds towards the purchase of the gold chain. He died in 1755 aged seventy four. Gabriel Ward, the nephew and devisee under
the Will of the first named, Geoffrey Ward, married Mary, daughter of Robert
Mackye, merchant. He filled the office of Bailiff in 1689 and 1700, and left a
son, Robert Ward, who was Mayor in 1729. He inherited the old family house on
Church Plain, which was depicted in Corbridge's map. As Palmer says, it had a
gable at the south end, and the remainder of the house had two storeys, the
second in the roof with three dormer windows.
The adjoining house on the right, as I previously
suggested, north of Row Sixteen (the row being through the archway), was a
Public House called "The Lamb", and afterwards the "Anchor of
Hope", and taken down with the adjoining house in 1868, when absorbed by
the brewery. Robert Ward married Caroline, daughter of the Reverend William
Beevor, by whom he had two daughters and co-heirs. The eldest, Elizabeth,
married John Lacon Esq., son of Edmond Lacon Esq., of Otley
in the County of York, who settled in Yarmouth and became the founder of the
Yarmouth family of that name. John
Lacon, the second and youngest son of the marriage, resided in the house on
Church Plain until his death, unmarried in 1811, aged fifty three, after which
his sister Miss Judith Lacon lived there until her death in 1817. Palmer says that two half-timbered houses
remained standing on the south side of Row Nineteen until 1868. At the south-west corner was a house having
a stone tablet let into the front bearing the date 1635, and the letters H. T.
E.- the initials of Henry Thompson and Elizabeth his wife, by whom it was
erected. He was a member of the
Corporation during the Civil War, but immediately after Charles the First was
executed, resigned his Office. When the
house was demolished in 1865 to allow the "Tun Room" to be erected on
the site, several fragments of carved stone, apparently the remains of some
ecclesiastical structure which had been used as mere building materials, were
discovered, in particular, two stone cups and some fragments of a fine
quatre-foil corbel mounding. These
houses must be those beyond the garden previously described as belonging to the
Wrestler's Inn. Since the house
fronting Church Plain, between rows nineteen and twenty-one was owned by the
Ward's, it cannot have been part of the Wrestler's. It seems much more likely
that the public house, the "Lamb" and the "Anchor of Hope"
was in fact owned by the Wrestler's, indeed this seems to be the case from the
reference on page 188, volume one of the perlustration. Palmer's description of
it there is somewhat confused.
*3 It seems
inconceivable that this famous public house was, in 1992 renamed by new owners as
"Hardy's".
*4 Lord Keith was Admiral, second in command to
St.Vincent in the Mediterranean.
*5 Fifty gun warships.
See also Row Nineteen