Gloucester Arms

This pub was located on the corner of Albert and Bridge Street. It was built in the 1860s by the merchant William Butt who also had the White Swan (directly opposite the Humber Hotel) and the Havelock Hotel on Kent Street.

The appearance of the Gloucester Arms resembled several pubs built in large towns and cities from the 1870s onwards, as publications made their pubs more conspicuous to bring trade. A two-storey corner pub, the Gloucester Arms was a mixture of gothic and vernacular classical design, with mullioned windows resembling church architecture and classical-inspired pilasters, finials and broken pediments.

In 1877 the landlord was a Mr Parsons. Parsons was fined 20 shillings for permitting drunkenness on the premises, and a year later, the new landlord Mr Atkinson was sent to prison for assaulting his wife. In 1883, the pub was run by Thomas Ramskill, who was charged on two counts of permitting drunkenness and in 1897, the former landlord William Butt was summoned to court for poaching fish (he was acquitted). The Gloucester continued to trade until the end of the 1960s when it was demolished along with a number of the terrace houses in the area. Local housing now covers the site where the pub once stood.