The Sun Public House Wyboston
House built on the site of the Sun Beerhouse at the corner of The Lane and the Great North Road - March 2007
The Sun Public House [also The Old Sun]: 4 The Lane, Wyboston
Wyboston used to be a hamlet in the parish of Eaton Socon and in the latter settlement there was also a Sun public house, making the two difficult to disentangle. Bedfordshire & Luton Archives & Records Service has few records of either. The Wyboston property seems to have belonged to the Baldock [Hertfordshire] firm Simpson's Brewery, for which the archives are with Hertfordshire Archives Service.
The countywide licensing register of 1876 states that the Sun had been licensed for over sixty years and was, at that date, owned by Simpsons. It was still a Simpsons property in 1891 but by the countywide register of 1903 it had, like the Bell at Little End, ceased to be a SImpsons property and was now owned by Bedford brewer Charles Wells. The register commented: "In a dirty, bad state, apparently insanitary". It is little wonder that the Sun closed in 1907.
The former Sun was valued in 1927 under the 1925 Rating Valuation Act, at which time the valuer recorded: that a T. Spencer was owner and occupier and that he only used it at weekends, it was built of brick and tile and that the barn formed part of the house which otherwise contained a parlour, living room, kitchen, scullery and two bedrooms, it was "awful up". At some point this house must have been demolished and the modern house occupying the site built.
List of References to records in Bedfordshire & Luton Archives & Records Service
- CRT110/102: list of deeds of Simpson's of Baldock at Hertfordshire Archives
- CLP13: register of alehouse recognizances: 1822-1828;
- PSB9/1: register of licenses: 1903-1935;
- Z53/40/24: 1960.
List of Licensees: note that this is not a complete list. Italics indicate licensees whose beginning and/or end dates are not known:
1822-1834: George Emery junior;
1847: John Neal;
1853-1864: John Neal (market gardener);
1869-1877: Joseph Serjeant/Sargent;
1890-1894: John Robert Odell;
1903-1906: George Eaton;
1906-1907: William Boddington
Public House closed 21st December 1907