|
|
Mortlake Hotel |
The spacious Mortlake Hotel was built on the site of the King's Arms in 1866. It stands at 1 High Street on the corner with Lower Richmond Road and has a distinctive rounded frontage and sash windows. It closed as a public house in 1955, but the building still stands today.
In the 1891 Census Isabel Barker was the licenced victualler living at the Mortlake Hotel. Isabel was a widow living with her three young children: Spencer aged six, Beatrice aged four and Edmund aged two. She also had a staff of five.
Another landlady, Mable Durrant, was the licenced victualler of the Mortlake Hotel in the 1901 Census. Her husband Charles was an insurance clerk, and they lived on the premises with their sons Spencer, Edmund and Marcel, and their daughter Beatrice. Marian Waghorn and Ethel Jackson were servant barmaids and Ethel Simmonds, a nurse/domestic servant were also living on the premises on census night.
Mortlake Hotel, as recorded in the 1914 Valuation, was a three-storey brick-built licenced house with a slate roof. There were seven rooms and a bathroom on the top floor. The first floor contained two rooms (one of which was large), a billiard room, large clubroom and a lavatory. On the ground floor were four bars, a serving bar, parlour, kitchen and scullery; there were cellars in the basement. In the back yard there was brick-built stabling for four coach horses with a loft. There is no evidence that the Mortlake Hotel ever accepted paying guests.
When the Mortlake Hotel closed in 1955 it was incorporated into Watney's brewery site; it became their staff canteen for many years. It is proposed that the building should remain and possibly become a small hotel within the proposed development of the brewery site.