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Thistle, 65 West Orchard

Thistle West Orchard
This possibly unique capture of the Thistle comes thanks to an advertisement by the printers J. W. Parbury next door, in an 1880 business directory.
This building first appears in a document of 1600. It was formerly called 'The Stone House' suggesting a house of the earlier mediaeval period. It was gable end on to the street because of the narrowness of the plot, being only 17 feet wide. Poole reports that in 1624 William Sewell gave "to and for the use of the poor children in the Hospital of Bablake, and for their better maintenance, one yearly rent of twenty shillings to be paid for ever, issuing forth of a messuage or tenement (The Thistle Inn) and garden, in the West Orchard Street in Coventry, on the north side of the same street". However, it may not have been a pub then. Nat Alcock in Coventry Streets believes that it did not become the Thistle pub until c1700, when it was the home of the Tisell family. In 1756 four soldiers were billeted here. Until 1940 it was owned by Phipps of Northampton. The pub appears to have somehow survived the big raid of November 14th 1940. The site wasn't sold to Coventry Corporation until 1956.


The thistle is a heraldic emblem of Scotland, adopted by James III.

LICENSEES:

Mr. D. Goddard John Simpson 1822 - 1823 T. Matthews 1828 - 1830 William Rider 1830 - 1835 John Rider 1835 Edward Berry Freckleton 1836 - 1839 Thomas Moreton 1839 - 1840 Thomas Chattaway 1840 - 1841 John Rider 1841 - 1843 George Gibson 1843 - 1845 Thomas Pettifor 1845 - 1847 Samuel Parker 1847 - 1853 David Dalgleish 1853 Richard Charnock (Jan to Nov) 1853 - 1865 James Walton 1865 - 1867 Thomas M. Turner 1867 - 1871 William Norris (moved to the Board, Spon Street) 1871 - 1876 Thomas Wheatley 1876 - 1890 Thomas Ludgate 1890 Andrew London (Aug to Dec) 1890 - 1892 Benjamin Duggan 1892 - 1893 Alfred Bailey 1893 - 1905 Frederick Bushill 1905 - 1911 Martha Bushill 1911 - 1916 Henry Herbert Naylor 1916 - 1935 Charles Roberts 1935 - 1939 Arthur Tinsley 1939 - 1941 William Henry Line 1941 William Thomas Horn
Thistle
Street plan of 1851
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