The Queens Head Public House Wyboston

The former Queen's Head in March 2007

The Queen's Head Public House: 64 High Street, Wyboston

This public house abutted the Gun & Cannon, which lay immediately to the north. The Department of Environment listed it as Grade II, of special interest, in 1961 and dated it to the 17th century, noting that it had been re-fronted in the 18th century. It is built of colourwashed roughcast over a timber frame with an old clay tiled roof and comprises two storeys with attics.

The earliest reference to it in any document held by Bedfordshire & Luton Archives & Records Service is in 1814 when it was conveyed, along with the Saint Neots [Huntingdonshire] brewery and other licensed premises by the executors of William Fowler, deceased to John Day of Bedford. Day was the founder of the later Day & Son, brewers, however, in 1840 the firm sold off fifty houses of which the Queens Head was one. William Hogg and Robert Lindsell bought the public house and thus it became part of Wells & Company of Biggleswade. This firm was taken over by Kent businessman George Winch in 1899, who purchased it for his son Edward Bluett Winch. In the countywide register of alehouse licences of 1903 the Queens Head was described as "dirty and apparently insanitary".

The Queens Head was valued in 1927 under the 1925 Rating Valuation Act, at which time the valuer recorded that it comprised a tap room, cellar (holding three and a half barrels), bar parlour, kitchen, thee bedrooms and a club room which was "only used in a day in a year", there was also an open shed, cow shed for four beasts, hen house, barn and three pigsties (two disused). Trade consisted of 18 gallons of beer a week, two dozen bottles of beer per week, half a pint of spirits in the same time and as for the rest "both Mrs. Watts & Mr. W senior don't know rent".

At some point after 1940 (the last reference in a directory held by Bedfordshire & Luton Archives & Records Service) the public house closed and it is now a private house.

64 High Street March 2010

References:

• WG331-332: conveyance: 1814;
• CLP13: register of alehouse licences: 1822-1828;
• WG2526: sale catalogue of licensed premises of Day & Son: 1840;
• GK49/1: sworn statement by Mary Martin that her garden had always been occupied with the public house, which had previously belonged to William Fowler, brewer of St.Neots: 1840;
• GK49/3: conveyance: 1840;
• GK49/4: release: 1892;
• GK1/36: three sales catalogues bound together: Wells & Company of Biggleswade 1898; Henlow Brewery 1899; Baldock Brewery Limited 1903;
• Z1039/34/2a: conveyance: 1899;
• PSB9/1: register of licences: 1903-1935.

List of Licensees: note that this is not a complete list. Italics indicate licensees whose beginning and/or end dates are not known:

1814: George Emery;
1822-1828: Thomas Martin;
1829-1862: Mary Martin;
1862-1864: John Bull (market gardener);
1869-1899: William Newman (market gardener);
1903-1905: Vincent Hannan;
1905-1913: John Hodgkins;
1913-1916: John William Panter Eales;
1916-1920: Alexander Charles Cummings;
1920-1925: Josiah Grant;
1925-1940: Arthur John Watts