This post was last updated on 25 July 2025 to include new information about the Swan and Dolphin.
Our first post about Wycombe Marsh’s pubs looked at those along the Oxford turnpike, now the modern A40. This second post examines the history of the pubs in Lower Marsh, between the main road and the back stream of the Wye along Back Lane, now Kingsmead Road.
The socio-economic history of the Marsh revolves around mills. Although there is evidence of corn milling at the Lower Marsh since the 11th century, by 1837 it was a paper mill. Henry Wheeler bought Wycombe Marsh Paper Mill in 1850, by which time the area was industrialising rapidly, with dozens of artisan cottages erected. Another paper mill, Beech Mill, at the junction of Beech Road and Kingsmead Road, operated from 1740 until 1900. As well as milling, the area was occupied by farming enterprises and furniture manufacture.
The earliest pub we can find was the Old Swan, an alehouse in Abbey Barn Road dating from 1820. Close by was the Swan, another Abbey Barn Road alehouse dating from sometime between 1828 and 1838. The third alehouse was the Disraeli Arms of 1840 in Ford Street.
Later came the General Havelock (1856) and the Dolphin (1864) beerhouses. There were also two short-lived beerhouses open around 1840.
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| A mixed group of characters outside the General Havelock c1920 (courtesy of SWOP, copyright managed by Bucks Free Press) |
The Old Swan appears in licensing records that were kept between 1753 and 1828 as an alehouse called the Swan with John Scott as the licensee. The licensing act of 1828 no longer obliged the clerk of the peace to keep records of alehouse licenses granted by the magistrates, and none were kept again until 1866. But study of the poor rate records, available from 1838, shows the pub as a beerhouse run by William Scott, a paper maker, and owned by Lydia Moreton. It’s reasonable to assume the alehouse of 1820 is the same pub as the beerhouse that we first find in 1838. So why did an alehouse become a beerhouse?
There are several reasons why alehouses became beerhouses. Firstly, beerhouse licences, which had been introduced in October 1830, were cheaper than the licences alehouses required, though, as the name suggests, only beer could be sold. Secondly, it’s possible that the magistrates refused, for some reason, to renew the Old Swan’s licence after 1830. There was nothing to stop a ratepayer buying a beerhouse licence after October 1830, as magistrates had no control over beerhouse licensing until the law changed in 1869.
Close to the Old Swan was the Swan on Abbey Barn Road, an alehouse that is not in the 1828 licensing records but appears in the first poor rate records in 1838 with Emmanuel Webb as the licensee and Wheeler’s brewery as the owners. The poor rate overseer that compiled the assessment books regularly confused the two Swans, the Old Swan being within spitting distance of its neighbour on the other side of Abbey Barn Road.
However, the Swan must also have been an old building as, in 1867, Wheeler’s brewery built a new pub and transferred the licence to it. Their explanation to the magistrates was that the old building ‘had been built round and rendered otherwise unfit.’
The poor rate record for 1839 shows a beerhouse occupied by William Massey and owned by the Reverend Geneste on the Back Lane, now Kingsmead Road. This beerhouse is unnamed and disappears after 1840. Another beerhouse recorded only in 1840 was occupied by William Long and owned by Thomas Robinson. It included a bakehouse, a combination with brewing beer that was not uncommon.
Long then appears in 1841 as the licensee of the Disraeli Arms that, just the year before, had been opened in Ford Street by William Hughes. This was a fully licensed public house acquired in 1845 by Marlow brewer Richard Gibbons – see footnote for a short history of this brewery. Wethered’s brewery were the owners from 1853.
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| The original Disraeli Arms of 1840 in 1931. The new building would be to the left of the photographer (courtesy of SWOP, copyright managed by High Wycombe Library) |
1856 saw Thomas Taylor set up a beerhouse on Back Lane in property owned by Lord Carrington. No pub name is recorded at this time, but it is later the General Havelock, probably after Major-General Sir Henry Havelock who had died of disease in India after the battles for Luknow during the Indian Rebellion of 1857. The original pub building was part of a farm though Taylor was a labourer.
Then in 1864 the last Marsh pub, the Dolphin beerhouse, opened in the end house of a row of six owned by James Williams on the corner of Ford Street and London Road, where the ornamental gardens are today. The house had been built in 1838 and used as a shop. The Dolphin was leased to Brakspear’s brewery of Henley with Benjamin Sheen as licensee.
It was common for dwelling houses to be adapted for use as beerhouses and shops, or a combination of both, as little work would be involved in the adaptation. Often the only way to tell Victorian and Edwardian pubs apart from dwellings was a pub sign or a notice attached to the building saying who held the licence.
On 27 October 1883, though tied to, and possibly owned by, Brakspear’s brewery of Henley, potential new licensee, Jacob Nottingham, asked the magistrates if it were necessary for him to take out a licence as he did not wish to use the house to sell beer. The Bucks Herald reported that ‘The Chairman said certainly not, if the applicant did not sell beer or any other intoxicating liquors. Superintendent Sargent said there were several licensed houses in the Marsh, and it would be a very good thing if this was done away with as a licensed house. The Chairman said he thought so too. He wished others would imitate the applicant's example. When it was stated [on the application] that the applicant was a total abstainer of many years’ standing he thought it was rather an incongruous thing that he should want to take a public house’.
These two reports demonstrate the keenness with which beerhouse keepers would often pursue a full licence application, the role of the police in influencing the licensing magistrates to refuse full licences to beerhouses and the relish with which beerhouses were done away with. It would be interesting to know what Brakspear’s brewery’s reaction was to Mr Nottingham not renewing his licence. Once that had happened the magistrates would not have granted a new tenant a licence if the brewery removed Mr Nottingham.
The house that contained the Dolphin and, later, Nottingham’s shop was pulled down in the slum clearance programme of the mid-1930s. The row of houses had become known as the Quicks by that time.
Meanwhile, the Old Swan had been acquired by the Lucas brewery of Frogmoor in 1863 after Lydia Moreton’s death. The brewery may already have leased the pub and supplied its beer. The Lucas brewery was taken over (‘merged with’ was the term used) by Wheeler’s to form Wheelers Wycombe Breweries in 1898.
The 1902 annual meeting of licensing magistrates held to renew, or refuse, licences for the year ahead – often called a ‘brewster session’ – had been postponed from October of that year to February 1903. The reasons for, and the outcome of, the meeting are worth a post of its own, but as far as the Old Swan was concerned it meant closure on 10 October 1903. In the 20 years to the date of the meeting the pub had seen seven different licensees, while the neighbouring Swan – now in the same ownership – had seen eight changes of landlord.
It’s likely that both pubs had been struggling to make a living – a working men’s club had also opened in 1897 – and Wheeler’s chose the Old Swan to be one of the licences that would not be renewed. The property, consisting of the pub, adjoining cottage, large gardens and outbuilding was sold at auction on the day before closure to Joseph Mayo for £300. It then became a shop.
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| A parade on Abbey Barn Road passes Mayo’s shop (the brick and flint building next to the Methodist Chapel) c1918. This is probably the former Old Swan (courtesy of SWOP, copyright managed by Wycombe Museum) |
The Disraeli Arms is by far the best documented of any pub on the south side of the London Road. There were only two families there between 1841 and 1903, the Longs and the Wrights. However, length of service didn’t help Sarah Wright in February 1903 when she was summoned to appear before the magistrates to answer charges that she had allowed drunkenness on her premises. The case, reported in the South Bucks Standard of 27 March 1903, seemed to rest on whether the police officer who found the alleged drunken man in the Disraeli Arms knew the man was drunk. The defence cast sufficient doubt on the constable’s evidence in the magistrates’ minds such that both the offender and Mrs Wright were acquitted.
Allowing drunkenness was a serious offence for a licensee. The brewery was concerned enough about the 67-year-old widow’s ability to deal with such situations that they pensioned her off the following month. In early Victorian times, brewers would often, sometimes under pressure from magistrates, refuse to allow a widow to take on the tenancy after their husband had died. One can’t help thinking that if she had been a man Mrs Wright might have kept her home.
In the records of Maidenhead pub broker, Horley & Son, the pub is described around 1910 as a ‘Nice comfortable home’ comprising a bar, tap room, parlour, kitchen, scullery, cellar and four bedrooms. All of this for a yearly rent of £20. Trade was good for the last year, with 209 barrels of beer sold as well as spirits and sundries – probably tobacco. The ingoing valuation was £110 for ‘a good inventory.’ The £110 was the price the new tenant paid for the fixtures, fittings and stock.
Wethered’s began to think about expanding the pub in 1908 by buying adjoining property, though their offer was rejected. By 1925 they had had their plans to improve the pub rejected for the fourth time, while the trade in beer had increased to 355 barrels a year. Further land was bought in 1928 for £215 and still the magistrates refused plans to improve the building. It took a private meeting between the directors and chairman of the licensing magistrates, as well as a complaint to the Brewers’ Society, before approval was given in 1931 to put up a new building next door for £2294, which opened the following year.
The plan for the old pub was to let it. The new pub tenant, Walter Pierce, was offered a 10% commission on rents for finding a tenant for the old building. Not satisfied with the size of the new pub Wethered’s bought the house next door for £600 in 1936 to develop into a tea garden. This house may have been Brook Lodge, which Wethered’s then sold for £1000 in 1948 along with the old pub building for £300.
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| The new Disraeli Arms in 1971. The pub sign bears the Disraeli coat of arms (courtesy of SWOP, copyright managed by Bucks Free Press) |
After the Old Swan’s closure in 1903 the Swan began to gather a reputation as an HQ for a variety of clubs and organisations – such as a Buffaloes Lodge, Marsh Cricket Club, an air gun club and, famously, Marsh Gordons Football Club – it had also had been altered in 1931/32, without the magistrates’ taking issue.
The Swan closed in 2010 and the Disraeli Arms followed in 2012. Both had been in Enterprise Inns’ ownership. While the Swan became a restaurant the Disraeli Arms was turned into flats, like the Red Lion across the London Road. The restaurant in the Swan failed and the building, though seemingly occupied at the time of writing, lives in a twilight world.
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| The Swan after closure and conversion to a Thai restaurant (courtesy of Movement 80 and closedpubs.co.uk) |
The General Havelock is now the only surviving pub in this part of the Marsh. Owned by Lord Carrington until 1896, it was probably bought by the Royal Stag brewery of Wooburn who are recorded as the owners in 1910. Royal Stag was taken over by Wethered’s in 1927 who closed the brewery.
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| The General Havelock before its 1933 rebuilding (courtesy of Marc Porter) |
Like the Swan and Disraeli Arms, alterations were made to the Havelock in the 1930s. And, as at the Disraeli, the first set of plans of 1930 were refused. A further application in 1933 was approved, so long as a strip of land at the front of the pub was given up for road widening. The alterations – which must have been significant – cost £1931, including £37 for the installation of electric lighting.
Despite the inter-war changes the Havelock retains a rural feel. It was granted a full licence in 1960. The Porter family took over the pub’s tenancy when Wethered’s swapped the Havelock for a Fuller’s pub in London in 1986, and a Porter has been there ever since.
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| The General Havelock today, still possessing a rural feel |
Footnote
Richard Gibbons was a brewer in St Peter Street, Marlow between 1842 and 1854. The Gibbons and Wethered families were intermarried, so there might have been some family dispute that led to Richard setting up on his own. The brewery and the pub estate, that included the Disraeli Arms, were sold at auction in 1853 and Wethered’s may have acquired other assets, as well as the pub.
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| The Disraeli Arms after conversion to flats (courtesy of Movement 80 and closedpubs.co.uk) |
Sources and acknowledgements
Licensing, rating and property records held at The Buckinghamshire Archives.
Newspaper reports, particularly the Bucks Herald accessed through the British Newspaper Archive.
The Bucks Free Press archive.
Trade directories held at High Wycombe Library and accessed through University of Leicester special collections.
Census records accessed through The Genealogist.
Lost Pubs of High Wycombe in wellingtonbootblog
BROWN, Mike 2007, ABC: A Brewers’ Compendium: A Directory Of Buckinghamshire Brewers, Brewery History Society: Longfield.
