The Corporation Arms, Grimsby

Attending the workshopSince my last post, I have been busy attending workshops on how to research local pub history with my colleague Ian Marshman.

The first workshop was held at the Grimsby Fishing Heritage Centre. Afterwards, we took the opportunity to visit the Corporation Arms on nearby Freeman Street.

The Corporation Arms is a Grade 2 listed three-storey building. Built using red brick and stone dressings it's recorded as being constructed in the late 19th Century. The building is slightly older than the listing suggests, and we can now accurately date construction to 1864/5.

First licenced in 1865 and known as the Corporation Hotel, it was built soon after the completion of Freeman Street in 1863 in response to Grimsby's growing industry when the docks opened in 1849.

Between 1858 and 1866 an astonishing 3,400 new houses were built to accommodate Grimby's rapidly increasing population.

An 1866 advert in the Lincolnshire Chronicle boasts of the hotel's 'exceptional quality with superior accommodation for travellers and commercial gentleman'.

During this period, the Corporation Arms was also a meeting place for societies and important town business. For example the decision to build the original Freeman Street Market was agreed upon at the hotel.

The pub as it looks today

The Corporation Hotel has also courted notoriety:

In 1883, the landlord of the Corporation Arms (Mr H. J. Curry) was prosecuted after harbouring prostitutes at the premises.

In 1885, the hotel was the location of attempted murder! Frederick Muller, a public house pianist, shot his estranged wife with a revolver in the passage leading to the bar. Thankfully, the bullet missed his wife and passed through her hat. Muller was apprehended at the scene and sentenced to 10 years of penal servitude (prisoners sent to prison were forced to do hard physical work).

In 1926, drama, tragedy and flames engulfed the hotel. The licensee, Mrs Maria Drayton, was tragically killed leaping from the second-floor window to escape a fire that had broken out in the early hours. Two female residents climbed onto the roof of the small canted oriel window (a bay window that you can still see today) on the first floor, before jumping to a nearby fireman's ladder. According to one report, wind from both directions turned the building into a 'raging furnace', leaving the interior 'completely gutted'.

Fireplace in the old Smoke Room
The Corporation Arms is one of the few pubs within the project area to make it into CAMRA’s Real Heritage Pubs booklet, described as “one of the best historic interiors in the region”. CAMRA supports pubs and breweries and campaigns for real ale.

In the guidebook, the pub's old Smoke Room is described as a 'truly splendid historic interior of a once-proud Victorian pub.' However, one suspects the wooden field panelling of this room would have been among the first things destroyed by fire in 1926.

Similarly, the "original" ground floor moulded plaster cornices and mantelpiece mentioned in the official list entry for the building were probably installed following the fire.