The Pheasant Inn Toddington

The site of the Pheasant March 2016

The Pheasant Inn: Park Road, Toddington

The Pheasant (or Old Pheasant) Inn stood on Park Road on the east side of Denbigh House. The first known record of the Pheasant is in the 1861 census, when it was occupied by John and Phoebe Horley. In 1868 a Royal Artilleryman, Thomas Brazier (or Brasier) was tried at the Bedford Quarter Sessions for the malicious wounding of three Toddington men during a fight outside the Pheasant [QSR1868/1/5/28]. It appears that Brazier and some other men had been drinking in the tap room when Brazier became "quarrelsome" and offered to fight the "best man in the house". The landlord, Frederick Randall, had refused to serve Brazier with any more beer. When he left the Pheasant a fight broke out in the street outside, during which William Fossey was stabbed in the eye, Joseph Turvey in the cheek, and Thomas Hyde in the ear. A surgeon who attended the injured men believed the injuries had been cause by a jagged implement such as a stick rather than by a knife. Brazier was sentenced to one month's imprisonment with hard labour. He was 21 years old [QGV12/2].

Frederick Randall appears again in the legal records in 1870 when he and three other Toddington landlords were fined two shillings and sixpence, with twelve shillings costs, at the Woburn Petty Sessions for serving short measures of beer. On 20th November 1891 Thomas Charles Harden was fined eighteen shillings with seven shillings and sixpence costs for opening during prohibited hours. At Christmas 1891 a fire took place at the Pheasant, but little damage was caused to the building although a valuable oil painting belonging to the landlord was destroyed.

The Pheasant closed in 1917 and by the time of the 1926 valuation survey the property was owned by Canon Frederick Nugent Hicks, who also owned Denbigh House, and leased to A. C. Warwick for £16 per annum. The brick and thatch detached house consisted of two living rooms and a scullery downstairs and a two bedrooms upstairs. Outbuildings consisted for a brick and thatch stable and a timber and corrugated iron barn. The entrance to Park Hill now runs across the site previously occupied by the Pheasant.

Sources:

• QSR1869/1/5/28a-c: case of Thomas Brazier: 1869;

List of Licensees: note that this is not a complete list; entries in italics refer to licensees where either beginning or end, or both, dates are not known:

1861: John and Phoebe Horley;
1864: Richard Harris;
1869: William Randall;
1880: William Fitness;
1880-1881: William Fane;
1881-1886: Thomas Mucklestone;
1886-1888: John Odell;
1888-1889: John Hatchmore;
1889-1891: Jesse Short;
1891-1892: Thomas Charles Harden;
1892-1894: Job Archer;
1894-1902: John Walter Jarvis;
1902-1903: John Wilfred Elworthy;
1903-1904: Levi Rose;
1904-1905: Harry Fox;
1905-1907: William Place;
1907-1909: Thomas Lancaster;
1909-1912: George Rudderham;
1912-1914: Andrew Mulholland;
1914: Charles Hart;
1914-1917: William Johnson Thomas;
1917: Ada Sarah Johnson.
Beerhouse closed 1917