The Golden Cross: Last Pub Standing

1849 map, Golden Cross, or Shield & Newcastle Tavern, marked with yellow arrow

1892 The view towards The Golden Cross in the same direction as the yellow arrow on the map above. Note the golden crosses in the upstairs windows.

I get shivers when I drink in The Golden Cross.

Why? Because I've spent two years writing 'Notorious: Charlotte Street and the Lane' and The Golden Cross is the only survivor from that time, the only building left standing where the people I've written about drank, sang, laughed, stole and lost their tempers. The Golden Cross is all that remains of these heady years. 

Gone from Charlotte Street and Whitmore Lane are The Cornish Arms, The Navigators, The Lame Chicken, The Noah's Ark, The Flying Eagle, The Dinas Arms, The King's Head, The Farmer's Arms, The Crown, The Britannia Inn, The Pembrokeshire Arms, The Newport & Pembroke, The Albion, The Somerset House, The Gloucester House, The Ship Inn, The Six Bells, The Caledonian, The Irishman's Glory, The Welsh Harp, The Sailor's Return, The Jolly Sailor, The Seven Stars, The Red Lion, The Excavators Arms, The Wild Wave, The Ocean Wave, The Golden Swan, The Three Crowns, The Castle Inn, The Globe Inn, The Custom House Hotel, The Ship & Pilot, The Ship Afloat, The New York Tavern, The New London, The Hibernian, The Great Eastern, The Green Fields of Erin, The Amber Bar, The Richards Arms and The Coal Hole. These people were thirsty back then...

People have been drinking beer on this site since at least 1846, that's 171 years of constant drinking! The pub's been called The Golden Cross since 1860 (wikipedia, and everyone else says it was 1863 but this date is wrong). It was rebuilt in 1904 so technically it's not the same Golden Cross but hey, we can't be too picky. In the same way the interior of the Custom House at the other end of Whitmore Lane was gutted in the 1980's and only the facade remains. 

This post will tell the early history of The Golden Cross. It's part of a series on two notorious streets in Cardiff, more can be found here.
The photo above of the 'Whitmore Lane Crossing' dates from a time when Charlotte Street and the old housing on Whitmore Lane had already been demolished a decade earlier. The crowded street scene, with it's sailors, police and local women still harks back to those times though. When this photo was taken Whitmore Lane had been renamed 'Custom House Street' twenty years earlier in an effort to whitewash it's iniquitous history.

Technically The Golden Cross was on Bute Street, but it is often referred to as part of Whitmore Lane. The longer half of it's frontage was along Whitmore Lane and the front door was on the corner of Whitmore Lane and Bute Street.

The Shield & Newcastle

The history starts in November 1846 with the pub called 'The Shield and Newcastle'. It was run by John Platt and his wife Ann. As it was on a street notorious for brothels and prostitution it's hardly surprising that Mr & Mrs Platt would get on the wrong side of some of the sex-workers there. In November 1846 John got a mouth full of curses from the experienced Mary Freeman. In June 1847 Ann Platt has a run in with Rachel Holiday. Rachel Holiday was a prostitute, her two sisters were also prostitutes, and she was going out with Harry Kickup, a thug from Cornwall who features heavily in my 'Notorious' book. After Rachel had been drinking she started to smash the glasses and then hit Ann Platt over the head with a jug:

Not the first, or the last, blood to be spilt in the pub.
The next month in July 1847 John Platt was getting assaulted by one of my Notorious women Kesiah Jones. Kesiah came out of gaol in the morning then went to his pub:

The location given here of the pub on Lewis Street must be incorrect as elsewhere Mary Griffith is recorded as working for John Platt at the Shields and Newcastle.
In September 1847 a milkman parked his cart too close to the windows of the Shields. Ann went out first to try to tip his milk cart over, the milkman shoved her back so John came out he beat him up. Meanwhile the donkey ran off:

On Boxing Day 1847, which was also a Sunday, John Platt was in trouble for being open. A mixture of soldiers, locals and 'girls of the town' including 'Plymouth Eliza' and Ann Perkins (who went on to run a brothel) were drinking in the Shields, which was the usual clientele on Whitmore Lane.
Ann Platt died in the summer of 1849, when the pub was called 'Newcastle Tavern' and John moved to Lewis Street to run a pub there- where he is by the 1851 census.

The Castle Inn

The pub then passed into the hands of Daniel Francis. Daniel lived at 40 Charlotte Street, which was spitting distance from The Shields and Newcastle, there he had run The Jolly Sailor beerhouse from 1842 until 1852.
In 1852 Daniel had dropped 'The Shields' part of the name and the pub was called 'New Castle Tavern'. This name further evolved into the 'Castle Inn' by 1855. It seems to have been a quiet place, supplying spirits to Whitmore Lane and staying out of trouble, until a man almost burnt to death there in 1856:

In February 1859 John Thomas had bought The Castle Inn. He was already the owner of The Griffin Inn on St Mary Street and a theatre in town.

The Castle Inn was the nearest place for the inhabitants of Whitmore Lane to buy spirits. There's a reference in March 1859 to two of Harry Kickup's prostitutes, Ellen Myers and Ann White, going to 'Thomas' gin shop' inbetween drinking at the beerhouses. They picked up a man at the gin shop and then beat the shit out of him afterwards.
Then in July 1859 The Castle Inn was undergoing a re-fit when a horrible accident occurred:

The fact that you could die from a broken leg goes to show the tough conditions at the time!

The Golden Cross

That death came at the same time as the death of The Castle Inn. The Golden Cross was born by March 1860 when John Thomas had the licence officially transferred from Daniel Francis into his name:

We are also fortunate to have a plan of the bar at The Golden Cross, probably the result of this fatal 1859 refit. It is housed in the Glamorgan Archives and was produced for a unused redevelopment of the pub planned in 1899. This is the only floor plan extant of any pub on Whitmore Lane or Charlotte Street:

The top right door is still the way into The Golden Cross today. Note the spiral staircase in the middle of the pub leading to the second floor living quarters. Also there are no ladies toilets. These weren't installed until 1943! (I assume they used the one marked behind the bar next to the outside area). Daniel Francis wouldn't have had to walk far to work either when he owned it as 40 Charlotte Street is top left of the plan.
John Thomas is running The Golden Cross but not living there as the 1861 census shows a bar manager Catherine Bevan and a servant Margaret Crowley or Crowline living there:

Although John Thomas is there when a man tries to pay for beer with fake money:

Catherine Bevan and John Thomas were probably behind the bar when the notorious prostitute Irish Meg went there for a drink in 1861 soon after she'd made a mint in a brothel robbery:

Margaret Crowley was still working there in 1863 with fellow barmaid Emily Price when the notorious thief Stephen Anderson, alias 'Mouse', popped in to The Golden Cross for a drink in 1863, it cost him four years of his life.

My favourite incident is also from 1863 when Billy Shortlegs, a Whitmore Lane bully and boatman who had lost his lower limbs, kicked off in The Golden Cross big style:

An important aspect of The Golden Cross was that it was a licensed public house. That meant it could sell spirits as well as beer- the majority of the 15 or so beerhouses on Whitmore Lane and Charlotte Street at this time were restricted to beer. These two prostitutes enjoy a glass of gin in 1864 then steal one of the glasses....

Selling spirits brought in the customers but it also came with a problem- licensed houses had to be behaved or their licenses would be revoked by the council (the beerhouses didn't have the same problem as they were regulated by Customs & Excise- who weren't fussy about morals). So although The Golden Cross has it's fair share of drunken fights and thefts it is highly unlikely it would have been a brothel in the 1860's as is claimed by some. It would have soon lost it's license and anyhow there were already about 10 brothels open at any given time at the other end of Whitmore Lane and on Charlotte Street.
Theft of items from The Golden Cross was a constant problem with so much poverty around. Stealing and pawning a glass could get you enough cash for a bed for the night. On a cold January day in 1864 three glasses got a young lad a bed for two months in gaol, then two years at reformatory school:

Harry Kickup was drinking in The Golden Cross, where his ex-wife had assaulted the landlady 17 years previously, in 1864. This time he was the victim of violence:

Thomas Yarwood, son of Mary the Cripple, was drinking in The Golden Cross in December 1864 and he claimed he was assaulted by PC Evans when he went out:

The problem with this claim is that Thomas Yarwood and Jack Matthews were both notorious brothel keepers and PC Evans was the policeman responsible for prosecuting the brothels.
The location of The Golden Cross at the intersection of Whitmore Lane, full of brothels, and Bute Street, full of sailors, meant that it was a good place for the working girls to take their marks for drinks, though they would then go on to a brothel. Here Emma Fry and Mary Ann Lee entertain at the end of 1863:

In 1868 the police were called to throw out John Daley, a local rough, who was making trouble (transcription below):

"At 12 Saturday night last found prisoner in the Golden Cross very drunk and riotous and threatening to split our heads- he refused to go out- we were requested by the barmaid and he refused to go we put him out and he struck Lewis (another PC) on the arm with a pewter cup- at the Police Station he kicked me in the privates. 30 shillings and costs or 21 days hard labour."
In 1869 it all got too much for one policeman. With a sick wife and child at home he had to have some shut eye supported by The Golden Cross:

There are plenty more incidents recorded for the years following 1869 - mainly assaults involving sailors, labourers and 'ladies of the pave' and petty thefts but I'll leave those for another time.

The Golden Cross is now a grade II listed building and it's survival is one of those happy accidents of history- it's fancy exterior and interior tiling being it's main saving grace. Nothing survives around it and like Whitmore Lane this end of Bute Street was renamed 'Hayes Bridge Road' and completely demolished in the late 1900's to whitewash the previous connotations of supposed sin.
The Golden Cross is now an island amidst a sea of traffic, glass and concrete and work has started on building Wales' tallest building just across the road from it on the other side of Whitmore Lane. But still, this fine, friendly pub remains- a stones throw from the city centre with some excellent internal and external features together with wet beer and good company and I would heartily recommend a visit.

So when I sit in the corner of The Golden Cross I know I am drinking where Harry Kickup, Irish Meg, Mouse, Thomas Yarwood, Billy Shortlegs and most probably all the other people I'm writing about once drank and it makes me happy that it's still there.

References:

1849 O'Rourke's Map is copyright Cardiff Libraries.
Photograph is 1892 by William Booth. National Library of Wales ID7202/DF000948
GRO PSCBO/1 C.P. Phillips v Mary Freeman 30th November 1846.
GRO PSCBO/1/3 Ann Platt v Rachel Holyday 14th June 1847.
Kesiah Jones: Monmouthshire Merlin 1847 July 31st.
Milkman: Cardiff and Merthyr Guardian 1847 September 18th p.2.
Boxing Day: GRO PSCBO/1/5 J.B. Stockdale vs John Platt 3rd January 1848.

Castle Inn
Name evolving: See Trade Directories for 1849, 1852, 1855
Harry Kickup's girls: see PSCBO/1/23 Henry Tonkin Warren 18th March 1859.
Sewerage: MM April 26 1856 p.3.
Lodger burning: CMG April 5th 1856 p.5.
Police drinking: CMG September 19th 1857 p.7.
License: CMG 1859 February 26th 1859 p.4.
Man death: CMG 1859 July 30th p.5.

Golden Cross
License: CMG March 10th 1860 p.6.
Census 1861 RG9/4033 F60 p3 Cardiff St Mary.
Women's Toilets: Plans are at Glamorgan Archives BC/S/1/34541
2 rebuilds were proposed in 1899 and 1901: Glamorgan Archives BC/S/1/13888 (1899) BC/S/1/14650 (1901) but were never realised.
Irish Meg: CMG April 20th 1861 p.6.
Bad Coin: 1861 Cardiff Times December 13th p.6.
Stephen Anderson MM October 31st 1863 p.2.
William Charles CMG September 18th 1863 p.7.
Girls stealing glass: Cardiff News March 4th 1864 p.3. Theft was a problem- a spoon stolen in 1863 (CMG November 20th p.8.) Three tankards also in the same year (Cardiff Times May 1st p.5.)
Reformatory school: 1864 CMG January 8th p.7.
Henry Warren: Cardiff New April 1st 1864 p.4.
Yarwood: CMG December 16th 1864 p.3.
Emma Fry CT January 1st 1864 p.6.
John Daley: PSCBO/1/50 John Daley 31st August 1868.
Policeman sleeping: Cardiff Times November 6th 1869 p.8.

The PSCBO/1 references are from the Glamorgan Record Office.
Newspaper images from the wonderful Welsh Newspapers Online. 

Notorious: Charlotte Street and 'The Lane'.

 

Whitmore Lane on the left. The Golden Cross circa 1890. National Museums of Wales.

Sex, violence, theft and death in Cardiff.

Anne Awberry, prostitute and drunk, from the Carmarthen 'Notorious' show.

My next project is a book with paintings based on thirty people living in two streets in Cardiff- Charlotte Street and Whitmore Lane over a thirty year period. It sounds a but dry but bear with me on this one. The two streets were back to back and connected with a maze of lanes and outbuildings.

Charlotte Street and Whitmore Lane 1851, Cardiff Central Station is bottom left. Glamorgan Record Office.

Even if you live in Cardiff chances are you won't have heard of them. They were purposefully destroyed by the Cardiff Corporation- Whitmore Lane was renamed Custom House Street in 1872 and Charlotte Street was demolished soon after and now lies under the Marriott Hotel. Only one building, The Golden Cross, remains in a rebuilt form on the original streets. In their time from the 1830's to the 1870's these two streets were truly notorious and full of brothels, beerhouses and lodging houses. A unique community of prostitutes, gangsters, thieves, pimps, boatmen, sailors and the poor emerged there - streets of vice and pleasure.

Two of my previous shows have used historical sources from Carmarthen and Merthyr Tydfil as a basis for my paintings so this project is a natural progression.

Bute Street, which was round the corner, is still well known in Cardiff as having been an area for pubs and prostitutes. Cardiff Bay/Tiger Bay further towards the coast has a semi-mythical status now as a unique and multicultural community but it came later in the 1870's and 1880's. The story of Charlotte Street and Whitmore Lane is unknown. Google searches reveal very little, academic books and articles make brief mention of it. It was a liminal area inhabited by unique subcultures. It was half town half docks, half working class half criminal, half land half water, half Welsh half Irish, half pleasure and half pain. It was a place of sex, violence, money, disease, prison and transportation, drink and drugs, laughter and death.
This is how it was described looking back in 1901:

Cardiff Times 1901 May 4th p.4.

Don't think I am exaggerating just because you may not heard of Charlotte Street and Whitmore Lane. The newspapers of the time are riddled with condemnation of these two streets. In 1860:
'The name I see written on a wall in black letters, which seem to be in mourning for lost characters- lost virtue- lost purses- lost everything relating to genuine happiness and respectability, and which letters form 'Whitmore Lane'... dens of infamy, shoeless feet, broken heads, flat noses, beds full of innumerable, diminutive, bona fide lodgers of biting and teasing propensities.' Cardiff Times February 25th, p.7.
The place of women in this community was central, pivotal and strong. They owned and ran brothels and beerhouses, they were prostitutes and thieves, they were drunk and violent and they also made money on their own terms. Disability was not always a hindrance there either and one of Whitmore Lane's most important figures, Mary The Cripple, a woman severely disabled from birth, managed to thrive and support an extended family there through difficult times. She is a character unique in Welsh history. I have unearthed the lives and stories of many other individuals who were not content to live their lives according to the socially acceptable roles of the time.

Mrs Prothero's brothel on the 1851 census, age 73 her house includes her house manager Mary Davies and four prostitutes including 'The Grenadier' from Chester and 'Little Punch' from Swansea. It operated for at least twenty years.

The thirty people I write about in the book are all social outcasts to some extent, more than half of them are female and three of them disabled. All of them are intriguing. For their story I have trawled whatever sources are available- newspaper reports, censuses, gaol and workhouse records, birth, death and marriage certificates, court records and maps. Their stories interweave with each other throughout the thirty years and it is almost possible to recreate the community through their lives. I am turning these historical sources into a ‘creative history’ or ‘narrative history’ format, that I have admired in the work of historians such as Helen Rogers and Lesley Hulonce.

I am primarily a painter though and so this book will cross creative and historical boundaries by containing thirty portraits of the main people within it. I want to illustrate these people, because as far as I am aware there is only one photograph extant of them, a prisoner mugshot from the mid 1870's of one of the bullies of Whitmore Lane. There are also no photographs of the streets either from the time, the one heading this post being the closest I can find. 


Daniel Davies, aka 'Swansea Dan', a boatman and bully from Whitmore Lane. The photograph was taken in Pentonville Prison in June 1876 after a charge of shooting. He has an abscess on his hand. Source: National Archives.

I am intensely passionate about this book as on a personal note my family lived there from the 1830’s until 1865. My grandmother knew her grandfather who was born there so the link is historical and biological. My family were (unfortunately) not notorious enough to be in this book but they do appear in the sidelines. They would have known everyone in it, they would have heard about every event on the street, they lived it and they are a part of me. 

So, utilising (so far) over 4,000 individual sources of information about these people, I’m drafting through the finished work. It’s currently around 90,000 words long with 30 paintings to do alongside it.

I can’t wait to introduce you to Kitty Pig Eyes, Lewis Leyshon, Mary the Cripple, The Notorious Jack Matthews, Swansea Sue, Mrs Prothero, Billy Shortlegs, Harry Kickup and the rest of the formidable cast of Notorious who hung around the Lame Chicken, The Kings Head, The Flying Eagle and the many brothels of Charlotte Street and Whitmore Lane.

The text is in a very rough draft form still as I've only recently added all of the core information in order but here's a flavour from 1841.

'Mrs Prothero, at 63 years of age, is the oldest owner of the oldest brothel in Cardiff. It gets the lion share of the business on Whitmore Lane, partly because it's right next to the Custom house where the sailors get paid off, partly because Mrs Prothero knows the game inside out. She’s also a light sleeper, alert to the comings and goings and a door banging nearby in the early hours rouses her. Hearing shouts of ‘Driver!’ from across the road she knows full well that the boatman William Bennett is in trouble again. The copper on duty has heard a grunting in a lane. He’s looked over a fence and seen Driver in the moonlight in a garden, digging up a stashed stolen goose. Mrs Prothero glides downstairs to her door in time to see Driver smashing in the head of the policeman with an iron bar. The copper has hold of Driver’s collar and manages a smash back on the head with his staff but then he faints. Driver runs off but is soon caught. Having no love for the thug, Mrs Prothero testifies in court that she saw him and he gets four months in Swansea Gaol.'

'Hard labour at the house of correction means grabbing a bar and walking up the steps of a giant wheel with a group of other inmates, turning it for no reason. Ten minutes on the wheel, five minutes off and you do that for eight hours straight.  Driver lasts six days then he dares to talk at the wheel. He’s sent to the dark cell for three nights of solitude on bread and water with nothing but a bowl to piss in.'

Driver goes on to beat children and punch sick women, but he gets his dues one dark night near the docks.....

For further reading on academic views on my paintings and their links to history please see:

Neo-Victorian review from BAVS2016 conference. by Emily Turner from Sussex University.  

Resoundingly Neo-Victorian Biofiction in Paint: Review of Anthony Rhys’s Notorious
Marie-Luise Kohlke

In Neo-Victorian Studies 8:2 2016. (Should be online but the link is down!)

Anthony Rhys 28th January 2017