Fleece’s golden era lasted for over 500 years
ACCORDING to Geoff Sandles’ informative website gloucestershirepubs.co.uk there are 17 hostelries in the county named The Fleece.
A popular name all over Britain, it’s said to derive from hostels that were owned in medieval times by the Knights of the Golden Fleece.
In Gloucestershire, of course, the name is especially apt, as in centuries gone by much of the county’s wealth was derived from wool.
Gloucester had two Fleece Hotels. One is no more, but stood at the top of Wotton Pitch and was, incidentally, the terminus point for the city’s tram system.
The Citizen picture you see here was taken in early 1965 just before the building was demolished and shows a workman with the last licensees Audrey and Eric Jones.
The city’s other Fleece Hotel closed this week in 2002, by which time it had welcomed over 500 years’ worth of weary travellers over its venerable threshold.
The Westgate Street Fleece opened in 1497 as one of the three great inns built by the Abbey of St Peter (now the Cathedral) to cater for pilgrims who came to Gloucester to visit the tomb of King Edward II after his grisly murder in Berkeley Castle.
Many locals will remember the Monk’s Retreat as a popular place to tipple.
Located beneath the Fleece, this was rumoured to be the entrance to a tunnel used by medieval monks who fancied nipping out of the monastery for a swift half without being seen to do so by the hoi polloi.
That’s one of those local legends you’d like to be true even if it isn’t.
For a time in the 1960s/70s the Monk’s Retreat was converted into a German style bier keller with foaming ale served in lidded steins.
In 1770 the Fleece was in need of major restoration, so the Dean and Chapter offered it to the city council for £150.
The council rejected the offer, but a few years later a private buyer was found.
In 1908 it was bought by a local family named Rich and was run as a successful, commercial hotel by them for the best part of a century.
There must be hundreds of local couples who have fond memories of the Fleece, as the 40 bedroomed hotel was a favourite for wedding receptions.
Its city centre position also made the Fleece the obvious meeting place for societies, business organisations, the Rotary Club, Literary Luncheon Club and other groups.
Gracie Fields stayed at the Fleece during the Second World War while she was in Gloucester to star in the radio variety programme Workers’ Playtime, which came from the canteen at Gloster Aircraft Factory.
Other celebrity guests included James Chuter Ede, Home Secretary in the 1945 Labour government, Kim Philby, the spy who defected to Russia, deputy prime minister Geoffrey Howe and his boss Margaret Thatcher.
Cheltenham’s Fleece Hotel was not
an especially lovely building, though compared to what’s there now it was the Mona Lisa in stone.
It stood on the corner of the High Street and Henrietta Street (originally called Fleece Lane) and along with Gardner’s Original Cheltenham Ale and Porter Brewery, the boys’ grammar school and a range of picturesque, individual shops, was bulldozed in 1967.
The family and commercial hotel was open for business by 1783 and was built to provide accommodation for the influx of fashionable folk who arrived in town to take the waters.
Cheltenham’s Thursday market was for centuries staged behind the Fleece, in fact pigs were bought and sold in the hotel’s yard.
So hardly surprisingly the Fleece was the venue for wheeling-dealing of an agricultural kind.
In Victorian times the hotel also played an important role in the town’s postal arrangements. The 1891 Annuaire for Cheltenham tells us that anyone with a package for Gloucester, the South West, or South Wales should take it to the Carrier’s office at the Fleece, manned by Mr Brown, for dispatch via the 11am or 6pm daily coach.
The 58 Town Commissioners (forerunners of the Borough Council) met at the hotel, as Cheltenham had no Municipal Offices until Harward Buildings in the Prom were acquired in 1915.
The Old Fleece is one of about a hundred timber framed buildings dating from the 16th and 17th centuries that can be seen in Tewkesbury.
Standing at 12, High Street, the former inn has a coat of arms carved over the entrance along with the year 1519.
This may be the date when rebuilding work was carried out, in which case the main part of the structure could be even older. Records tell us that the inn was in business and underwent a major restoration in 1897.