Home > Nottinghamshire > Sutton In Ashfield > Red White & Blue Red White & Blue
	Click above photo to expand		Picture source: Heather Faulkes
This pub stood on the corner of the market place and High street, facing opposite the Durham Ox. According to William Clay-Dove, a local historian, the house was the oldest on the street; thought to have been built at the time of King James II. Samuel Shephard was living in the property as early as 1847 but was first listed as a Beer Retailer in 1853 and a Beerhouse Keeper in 1864. He held a licence there for at least twenty four years, before his nephew George Shaw took over. The Red, White and Blue was part of a parcel of property put up for sale by auction in October 1882, formerly owned by Mr Frederick Butcher, a bankrupt. It was described as “the old licensed free beer-house known as the “Red White and Blue”, occupied by Mr George Shaw. The property was Copyhold of the Manor of Mansfield. In 1888, the shop next door was demolished and the old building housing the Red, White and Blue was replaced with a new one, moved 15 feet down High Street, at the request of the Local Board, to create space for a new road leading to the Market Place. The new building was partially built over the site of the old one. The new road was named Victoria Street and the new Red White and Blue was now on the corner of High Street and Victoria Street. When George Shaw applied to move his old licence to the rebuilt property, it was said that he had occupied the original property as the tenant for the previous ten years, and his uncle, Samuel Sheppard, had occupied the property for the thirty years before that. The original licence “was not granted by the Bench, but one of those licences under the statute of George IV, which allowed anyone to have a licence by paying the revenge.” The re-licencing was opposed by the General Baptist Chapel that stood next door and the local Temperance Society, who claimed there were 23 licenced houses in a radius of 200 yards. The application was approved. The Red White and Blue hosted a district meeting of the Amalgamated Society of Engine-Men in July 1891, while in December 1893, a “smoking concert”, organised by the Sutton Town Football Club, was held there, with some performers coming from Beeston and Nottingham. During or prior to the occupation of Alfred Ellis, the house was bought by the Home Brewery Company. Sometime later there were structural alterations made, including moving the main door of the property from the front corner, facing the marketplace, to the side of the building that faced onto the High Street and replacing the original doorway with a window. In 1953, Harold Fletcher, describing himself as a tenant of the beerhouse for the past twenty years, was granted a full publican’s licence, subject to “an increase in the monopoly value of £750”. The property was marked as a public house on the OS map of 1960 and the map of 1967. The map of 1976 shows a building on the corner that is the same shape and size but no longer marked as a public house. Photographic evidence shows the building survived at least until after the construction of Sutton Centre School, which opened in 1973. In 1977, the Home Brewery put in an application to change the use of an unnamed “former public house” on Victoria Street into a licenced social club. This was most likely the old Red, White and Blue. In 1988, the brewery made another application regarding a “site for retail/residential or office building”, which suggests the building could have been taken down by that time, but the brewery still owned the land. A small block of retail and office space was built in the early 1990s although they were set back from the corner, improving visibility for traffic and pedestrians. They most recently housed Hollis & Co Solicitors and the Lincolnshire & Nottinghamshire Air Ambulance Charity Shop.
Source: Heather Faulkes
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Other Photos
		Picture source: Heather Faulkes
Site of The Red white & Blue, 2023		Picture source: Anthony Beaumont