The White Horse Public House Broom

White Horse September 2007

White Horse Public House: Southill Road, Broom

English Heritage listed the White Horse as Grade II, of special interest. They considered it an 18th century building. It is timber-framed with a later brick addition and the whole exterior has been rendered and colour-washed; it has a clay tile roof.

The building has been licensed since at least 1822 when it appears in a register of alehouse licences [CLP13], the Register of Licensed Premises of 1876 for the county merely noting that it had been licensed for over fifty years. It was owned by Biggleswade brewer Samuel Wells in 1834 and remained part of Wells & Company until it was taken over by Kent businessman George Winch, for his son Edward Bluett Winch, in 1899 when it was renamed Wells and Winch.

In 1927 Broom was valued under the Rating Valuation Act 1925; every piece of land and building in the county was assessed to determine the rates to be paid on it. The valuer visiting the White Horse noted [DV1/C/212] that the public house was rented by its tenant for £25 per annum from Wells and Winch and comprised a tap room, a "very small" bar and passage, a cellar, a kitchen and pantry, a scullery and three bedrooms with barns with a loft over outside. Trade averaged a 36 gallon barrel of beer per week and only eighteen bottles of beer per month, with a gallon of spirits being sold in the same time.

Wells and Winch was taken over by Suffolk brewers Greene King in 1961. It remains a Greene King public house at the time of writing [2008].

References:

• CLP13: Register of Alehouse Licenses: 1822-1828;
• GK0/1: conveyance of brewery and licensed properties of Samuel Wells of Biggleswade, brewer, deceased to Frederick Hogg and William Lindsell: 1834;
• HF143/1: Register of Alehouse Licences - Biggleswade Petty Sessional Division: 1872-1873;
• HF143/2: Register of Alehouse Licences - Biggleswade Petty Sessional Division: 1874-1877;
• HF143/3: Register of Alehouse Licences - Biggleswade Petty Sessional Division: 1878-1881;
• HF143/4: Register of Alehouse Licences - Biggleswade Petty Sessional Division: 1882-1890;
• HF143/5: Register of Alehouse Licences - Biggleswade Petty Sessional Division: 1891-1900;
• GK1/36: three sales catalogues bound together: Wells & Company of Biggleswade 1898; Henlow Brewery 1899; Baldock Brewery Limited 1903;
• Z1039/34/2a: conveyance of licensed properties from Frederick Archdale, Charles Samuel Lindsell, Henry Martin Lindsell and Arthur Knox Lindsell to Wells & Winch: 1899;
• HF143/6: Register of Alehouse Licences - Biggleswade Petty Sessional Division: 1900-1914;
• PSBW8/1: Register of Alehouse Licences - Biggleswade Petty Sessional Division: 1903-1915;
• PSBW8/2: Register of Alehouse Licences - Biggleswade Petty Sessional Division: 1956-1972;
• PSBW8/3: Register of Alehouse Licences - Biggleswade and North Bedfordshire Petty Sessional Divisions: 1976-1980

List of Licensees:

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

1822-1828: William Crowther;
1841-1851 David Garner
1869: William Boud;
1872-1884: Martha Boud;
1884-1908 Frederick Walter Boud;
1908-1945: William Tomlinson;
1957-1992: John Odell;
1992-1995: Brian Norman Hawkins