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Guildford Hotel

There may have been as many as four public houses called 'Guildford Hotel'.

1. According to Michael Bourke (1947: 46), the first Guildford Hotel was on the western bank of the Swan on the grant allotted in May/June 1830 to George Cowcher. Cowcher also ran the concession to conduct the first ferry there, about where the modern bridge now crosses the river.

Bourke:
In May and June [1830] allotments were assigned to George and Sarah Best, Dr Robert Foley and Dr George Cowcher. Dr Cowcher had arrived in the colony with a very meagre supply of goods and capital. He was apparently one of those whom Stirling had described as ‘helpless and inefficient’, for it was not long before he was forced to apply to the Government for a loan, and for several years he and his family lived mainly on rations supplied by the Government. After settling in Guildford with his large family he began building a temporary house which, when completed, he opened to the public as the ‘Guildford Hotel’. This was the first hotel in Guildford. (Bourke 1987: 46.)

Tuckfield writes (1971) that Cowcher's Guildford grant was alongside the river, nearly opposite James Dodds's property on the other, western side, where Dodds established the Cleikum Inn. (Tuckfield 1971: 69.) Tuckfield also writes that Cowcher was apparently unsuccessful in getting a hotel licence - but his research was done about sixteen years before Bourke's.

2. Paul Hasluck writes (1927) that there was a Guildford Hotel 'on the Woodbridge Estate': 'A succession of partnerships among the families of Jones and Jecks kept hostelries under the names of Jones’s, Jones’s Inn, Woodbridge and the Guildford Hotel. The Guildford Hotel, which was kept by Jonathan Jones about 1840, stood in the Woodbridge Estate, on a site about three hundred yards east of the present East Guildford railway station.' (Hasluck 1927: 7) This is where the present-day Woodbridge Hotel stands, on the eastern side of East Street - now still in the suburb ofGuildford, but in earlier times just outside the township. Jonathan Jones was the name of the husband of Elizabeth Edwards (m. 1838), and Elizabeth and her sister Caroline ran a hotel in 1857 called the Two Sisters. It was formerly known as the Guildford Hotel, and reverted to that name after a couple of years.

3. Devenish's hotel, 10 James Street, was also known as Guildford Hotel (and Devenish Inn, Liverpool Arms, Royal Hotel). The mudbrick building which was opened as a hotel in 1840 is not extant. On the site now is a c. 1850 building which is currently (2021) for sale as a private house, but has a long history of different uses.

4. The present-day Guildford Hotel (1886/1915) is on the corner of Great Eastern Highway at 159 James Street, Guildford. The only one of the four apparently not to have any other name. It provides some of its history on its website.

Tuckfield:
... W. Rummer (late of the Guildford Hotel and still later, the Stirling Arms of Guildford ... Tuckfield 1975: 100.

William Rummer was the licensee of the Two Sisters hotel 1856-58 at an unknown site in Guildford. Perhaps it was one of the Guildford Hotels under another name.

References and Links

Bourke, Michael J. 1987, On the Swan: a History of Swan District, Western Australia, UWAP for the Swan Shire Council.

Carter, Jennie 1986, Bassendean: A Social History 1829-1979, Bassendean Town Council.

Hasluck, Paul 1927, 'Guildford: 1827-1842', Early Days, vol. 1, part 2: 1-19.

Tuckfield, Trevor 1971, 'Early colonial inns and taverns', Part 1, Early Days: Journal and proceedings of the Royal Western Australian Historical Society, 7, 3: 65-82; Part 2, Early Days, 7, 7: 98-106.

Guildford Hotel [1] website.

Freotopia

This page incorporates material from Garry Gillard's Freotopia website, that he started in 2014 and the contents of which he donated to Wikimedia Australia in 2024. The content was originally created on 22 August, 2019 and hosted at freotopia.org/hotels/guildfordhotel.html (it was last updated on 28 November, 2023), and has been edited since it was imported here (see page history). The donated data is also preserved in the Internet Archive's collection.