.

The White Hart

Silver and Market Streets, Bradford on Avon, Wiltshire

.

The White Hart Temperance Hotel in a flood, June 1903

The White Hart public house was situated in Horse Street, the short narrow piece of what is now Market Street. The name probably has nothing to do with horses, but comes from a word meaning muddy, which was probably the state of this spot at the bottom of the hill near the river in the Middle Ages.

Close to the Town Bridge and the old Market Place in Silver Street, the White Hart was one of a cluster of pubs that also included the Lamb, Royal Oak and King’s Arms. It was a pub under that name in 1725 when the publican was Benjamin Cooper. During the first half of the 19th century it was in the hands of the Spender  family: Benjamin (who died in 1838), his widow Sarah (died in 1851) and their son Thomas. The Spenders had been associated with the White Lion in Newtown in the previous century. When Thomas Spender retired in 1865 the freehold of the White Hart Inn & Brewery was put up for sale. The sale particulars listed “3 cellars, bar, bar parlour, large tap room, sitting room and 5 bedrooms above, malt and hop room, store room, well and force pump.”

Its days of serving beer finished in 1879 when it was purchased by the Rev John Charles Thring (1824-1909) of The Chantry, demolished and replaced by a new well-appointed temperance hotel. The new hotel was built by Frederick Long to a design by architect Charles Septimus Adye (1841-1906) and opened by judge Camille Félix Désiré Caillard of Wingfield. In 1887 and the early 1890s Joseph Kitley, restaurant keeper, was running what was called the White Hart Coffee Tavern.

The temperance movement was dying away after the turn of the 20th century and by 1908 the hotel had closed. The building became a shop selling furniture and household goods as a branch of the Trowbridge firm of H.J. Knee & Son, remaining until 1967. Then it was again demolished to improve the junction of Market and Silver Streets. This is the spot that is still known as Knee’s  Corner.