YATELEY'S BEERHOUSES

The Royal Oak

John and Barbara Sandford quickly established their beerhouse, the Royal Oak, under the new law of 1830. John had purchased the copyholding of a property described in 1820 as 1 Messuage or tenement with the Yard and Garden thereunto adjoining as it is now divided by metes and bounds part of the Copyhold Lands and Premises called Paskins in Yately.

In the parish records recording the birth of their three children born from 1819 John described himself as a servant. For the birth of Thomas in 1834, however, he proudly describes himself as keeper of a public house. John died in 1835 aged 48. His widow Barbara, who had been born in Eversley, was listed in the trade directories as the beer-seller throughout the 1850s. However her eldest son John, born in 1819 and describing himself, like his father, as "servant", sold the Royal Oak for £105 to the Eversley brewer, William Belsher Parfett in 1845. The Court book recording this transaction states that the property was now ... late in the occupation of Rebecca Marlow widow. Perhaps Barbara Sandford decided to give up the beerhouse, but she is back there in the census for 1861 as beerhouse keeper aged 72, together with her daughter Elizabeth aged 32. The burial register records Barbara's death in 1863 at the age of 75, remarkably born and dying in the same years as John Bedford of the Cricketers.

By the next census (1871) Richard Oxlade was "mine Host". Born in Marlow he was then 58 and, like Charles Oxlade aged 33 at the Anchor, described himself as "licensed victualler". They were perhaps father and son, but Richard's wife Emma, at the Royal Oak, is only 45.

Richard had gone by 1878 and Lawrence Yeomans is shown in the trade directories as the beer seller, with the blacksmith shop next door, shown in old photographs as "Yeomans". By 1885 another long run of family proprietors is established with George White. In 1927 Arthur Ernest White at the Royal Oak was granted renewal of his licence at the session when the Plough, and the Fox just across the border in Eversley, lost their licences, as explained later. Next year Arthur White was granted a licence to sell wine on and off the premises. But it was not until 1957 that the Royal Oak became fully licensed, when Morland transferred the full licence from the Pheasant at Heckfield, which was delicensed and is now (1997) a "Little Chef" (This subsequently closed, later burned down and the site has been cleared (2008)).

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Original page written by P J Tipton for the Yateley Society's 1997 Exhibition: Inns, Alehouses & Maltsters

Additional research by Richard Johnston & Elizabeth Tipton

Original page has been revised to include the Society's latest Research

(c) The Yateley Society, 1997 & 2008

Page Exhib.1997.15