The Definitive Guide to the History of
Pubs and Beerhouses in Coventry

Drinking in an Old English Town

Thistle, 65 West Orchard

This building first appears in a document of 1600. It was formerly called 'The Stone House' suggesting a house of the earlier mediaeval period. It was gable end on to the street because of the narrowness of the plot, being only 17 feet wide. Poole reports that in 1624 William Sewell gave "to and for the use of the poor children in the Hospital of Bablake, and for their better maintenance, one yearly rent of twenty shillings to be paid for ever, issuing forth of a messuage or tenement (The Thistle Inn) and garden, in the West Orchard Street in Coventry, on the north side of the same street". However, it may not have been a pub then. Nat Alcock in Coventry Streets believes that it did not become the Thistle pub until c1700, when it was the home of the Tisell family. In 1756 four soldiers were billeted here. Until 1940 it was owned by Phipps of Norhampton. On November 14th of that year it was destroyed by enemy bombing. The site wasn't sold to Coventry Corporation until 1956. The thistle is a heraldic emblem of Scotland, adopted by James III.

LICENSEES: 1822 - 1823 T. Matthews 1828 William Rider 1836 - 1839 Thomas Moreton 1839 Thomas Chattaway 1841 George Gibson 1850 - 1851 David Dalgleish 1861 James Walton 1868 - 1871 William Norris (moved to the Board, Spon Street) 1874 T. Wheatley 1879 - 1891 Thomas Ludgate 1893 Benjamin Duggan 1894 - 1905 F. Bushill 1909 M. Bushill 1911 - 1913 H. H. Naylor 1919 - 1936 Charles Roberts 1937 - 1938 S. Tinsley

Street plan of 1851