The White Hart Tavern was built during the late medieval or Tudor period on the east side of Bell Lane, (now Bell Street). Bell Lane ran south from the eastern corner of the High Street -then the one main road through Reigate. The tavern may have originally been established to serve religious travellers; it was next to a site where the 14th-century St. Lawrence’s Chapel is believed to have stood. The White Hart was also near the entrance to Reigate Priory, which had been founded in 1235.
Today we use the word ‘tavern’ as a marketing term to evoke a traditional or rustic atmosphere but in medieval times taverns served wine to wealthier people like merchants, gentry and officials.
Edward VI’s Wine Act of 1553 legally separated taverns from ordinary alehouses and required them to be licensed. The legislation was a direct response to rising antisocial behaviour, targeting the ‘many taverns of late newly set up in very great number in back-lanes corners and suspicious places.’ The Act set a strict limit of two licensed taverns in towns like Reigate. Other licensed premises could sell wine provided it was consumed off the premises.
Taverns were much rarer than alehouses. In 1577 Elizabeth I’s government did a tax survey which counted 17,595 drinking houses across the country. Of these 86% were classed as alehouses, 12% as inns and only 2% as taverns.
The first tavern keeper at the White Hart that we know by name was an Elizabethan man called John Wood who was the tenant between 1582 and 1603. He was succeeded by Nicholas Lee, described as the ‘hostler at harte’, who was buried in the churchyard in 1616.
Posthumous portrait by his nephew, a portrait painter
In 1636 John Taylor, known as ‘the water poet,’ visited Reigate while researching a travel guide to the ten counties nearest London.
John Taylor was an interesting and eccentric character. A Thames waterman by trade, he had a grammar school education and supplemented his earnings by writing poetry, subversive pamphlets and other literature, that was widely read at court and in the city.
He was also an avid traveller and adventurer. He served in the naval fleet at the Battle of Cádiz, organised a royal water pageant for James I’s daughter, Elizabeth, and later visited her court in Bohemia. Always a showman, he once nearly drowned when he rowed down the Thames in a paper boat for a publicity stunt.
In 1636 John Taylor published his travel guide which listed the principal taverns in each town for the discerning traveller. His entry for Reigate reads:
Rygate is anciently famous for affronting and repulsing the Danes neer there in Holensedale, neere which is a ruinated Castle called Holme Castle; the Tavernes may be two but William Pistor hath the command, the Hart.
This entry confirm that the White Hart was one of the two taverns in Reigate, and had probably had that status since Edward VI’s Wine Act.
In 1664 the property’s owner, William Pistor, Gent, paid the highly unpopular Hearth Tax for six hearths in Reigate town. He also owned an unoccupied property with 3 hearths in Merstham. This may be the same William Pistor mentioned in the 1636 travel guide or perhaps his son.
A few years later in 1676 King Charles II issued a proclamation requiring all owners of taverns and coffee houses to swear an oath of allegiance. They were also forced to report any customer who spoke out against the King, entering into a massive £100 legal bond which would be forfeited, along with their licence, if they failed to do so. These strict rules did not apply to alehouses as the government did not believe common alehouse drinkers were capable of organised sedition.
The Surrey History Centre at Woking holds a number of beautifully preserved legal documents written in iron gall ink on vellum, (a type of parchment made from sheep goat or calf skin). These documents reveal that by 1698, during the reign of William and Mary, the tavern and other properties in Bell Street were owned by two out-of-town gentry families, the Brays from Balcombe and the Pellets, from Bletchingley. Thomas Foster was named as the tenant landlord of the White Hart a tenancy he held until his death in 1721.
The next owner, Stephen Carter, had bought the freehold in 1706. He was a collar master - a skilled craftsman who made leather collars and harnesses for working animals. Carter had no plans to be an inn keeper himself but the White Hart was an attractive investment because it was a ‘burgage messuage.’ A messuage was a dwelling house with its associated land and buildings and a burgage messuage carried voting rights.
This was a really shrewd financial move. The Carter family held the property until 1750 when it was sold to Mr John Cocks, father of Lord Somers, for £400. John Cocks was systematically buying up properties with voting rights to turn Reigate into a ‘pocket borough.’ The Somers held the property for the next 171 years and continued to control elections until the Reigate constituency was abolished for rampant corruption in the Reform Act of 1867.
Until the mid-18th century, traffic to the White Hart was limited by Reigate’s atrocious roads. Most travellers heading south from London preferred the route through Croydon and Godstone avoiding Reigate for much of the year.
The situation was transformed in 1755 with the construction of the new Reigate Hill turnpike road. It was the first properly engineered road north from Reigate, cutting through the chalk on the route of the modern A217. The Reigate-to-Crawley stretch of the turnpike ran directly down Bell Street past the door of the White Hart.
In 1775 the new turnpike allowed Reigate to take advantage of the new daily postal service from London to provincial towns, (Sundays excepted). The era of the stage coach had arrived and the White Hart Hotel, constructed just the previous year, was perfectly positioned to cash in on the opportunities it brought.
The new hotel was built on Bell Street adjoining the north side of the old White Hart tavern. A 1786 survey of Reigate Old Borough described it as
A capital new erected Messuage, the White Hart Inn, with stables, built on the site of three shops, one wherof was a repository for corn on market days, the second a sadler’s shop and the third a butcher’s shop, and they were severally let out to him by the person occupying the ancient White Hart.
The adjoining old White Hart tavern was described as having outhouses, a corn loft and a bowling green.
The new building was built and financed by the tenants Prime and Baldwin. As shown on this 19th century map, the enlarged White Hart Hotel estate had extensive grounds, covering just under two acres. It comprised the main hotel block and courtyards, the ruins of St Lawrence chapel, the expansive rear wings for stables and coach houses, and long, sweeping formal pleasure gardens to the east, that ran up to the boundary of the Barons. Bancroft Road was later constructed along this eastern boundary line.
At the White-Hart the traveller is certain of meeting with every accommodation he can wish: good post-horses, an excellent larder, genuine wines, &c. which have rendered Mrs. Sully worthy the encouragement she meets with. His Royal Highness the Prince of Wales, in his excursions to Brighthelmstone frequently dines here
The well-known aquatint by Thomas Rowlandson and Samuel Alken of the White Hart at Reigate was originally made for An Excursion to Brighthelmstone (Brighton) a travel book written in the 1790s by Henry Wigstead.
The accompanying text makes it clear that Mrs Sully was the tenant at the White Hart Hotel at that time. She was responsible for building its reputation as a premier staging post on the road from London to the newly fashionable coastal resort of Brighton.
James Relf, a wealthy local yeoman with links to the tanning industry, succeeded Mrs Sully in 1793. He continued to welcome royal visitors and Queen Victoria came twice. A later correspondent to the Surrey Mirror claimed that when the royal party left after lunch on her second visit, an attendant had to return to retrieve the future Edward VII’s bottle.
The famous diarist, Anne Lister, known to us as ‘Gentleman Jack,’ stayed the night at the White Hart with her aunt Anne and her lover Mariana Lawton in August 1826. In her diary, she recorded staying up until midnight writing up her accounts after enjoying evening tea at 9.30pm. The following morning she had breakfast at the hotel before a late morning excursion to admire the suspension bridge on Reigate Hill and visit the sand caverns.
The White Hart proved an excellent tenancy for the Relf family. As well as serving as a staging post for coaches and a posting house for the Royal Mail, it became a natural place of local business. Particulars of property for sale were advertised here, auctions were held, deals were concluded and important civic matters discussed at meetings in its private rooms. It was the natural choice for electioneering and a number of very lucrative election night dinners were held, one of which is described in The Election Night Dinner 15 December 1831. Over time, the family built up an extensive property portfolio.
James’s son, Samuel Relf succeeded him in 1832. In 1866 he was caught up in a major political scandal when a parliamentary investigation exposed widespread and systematic corruption in the election practices in Reigate. The findings were so severe that parliament stripped Reigate of its remaining MP.
Relf gave evidence to the enquiry, describing himself as ‘something between a tradesman and a gentleman,’ but unlike several other Reigate citizens he managed to escape being named and shamed as one of the people directly involved in the bribery that had taken place.
The White Hart survived the end of the coaching era but soon faced an entirely unexpected existential threat. In 1883 Lady Henry Somerset became the lifetime beneficiary of the estate on the death of the third Earl Somers. As a prominent leader in the Temperance movement, she made it her personal mission to close down all the public houses in her estate as soon as their leases expired.
Her primary target was the White Hart. However, her attempt to refuse it an alcohol licence led to a legal challenge by the trustees of Earl Somer’s will, who argued that she did not have the right to destroy a highly profitable asset. Lady Somerset lost the case and the White Hart, and other local pubs, were able to retain their licences.
When Lady Henry Somerset’s estate was broken up and sold after her death in 1921 the sales particulars for the White Hart gives a final picture of how this grand property looked in its final years. Among its selling points were a beautifully timbered mature pleasure lawn and glasshouses. These contained productive lean-to vineries, peach houses and plant stoves supplying luxury fruits for the table.
A few years later in 1933, the new owners demolished White Hotel to pave the way for substantial redevelopment of this part of Reigate. The iconic hotel and its large garden disappeared as Church Street was widened and a new car park and the Majestic cinema were built. After more than four centuries, the old White Hart had finally gone but its echo remained.
The last landlords to manage the original establishment, Captain Alexander Thomson and his son of the same name, relocated to Church Street. Here they built a new White Hart Hotel that boasted modern luxuries like central heating and nine bedrooms with running hot and cold water. This building survives today as the Hatay Restaurant, continuing the tradition of hospitality.
The origins of British pub names, (2024), Mark Cartright
Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Taylor, John (1580-1653)
Portrait of John Taylor (1580–1653), c 1655, gift of the artist John Taylor, (nephew to the water poet), to the Bodleian Libraries, University of Oxford
The Honorable, and Memorable Foundations, Erections, Instautations, and Ruines, of Divers Cities, Townes, Castles, Monasteries, Churches, Wrackes, and Monuments, in the Sounding, Flourishing, and Famous Kingdome of Great Britaine, (1636), John Taylor
Hearth Tax Digital, https://gams.uni-graz.at/archive/objects/o:htx.SRY/methods/sdef:Ontology/get#Reigate
The Black Horse Inn fire grate in Nuthurst, West Sussex, England, (2017), Acabashi
Surrey History Centre, 17th/18th century property transfer documents
The Met Collection,
https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/738524
Reigate, its story though the Ages, (1945), Wilfred Hooper
Brighton Gazette, 31 May 1832
Surrey Mirror 6 October 1933 and 22 February 1935
Daily News (London) Published 28 September 1866
English: Temperance activist Lady Henry Somerset in 1884
Irish Temperance League Journal, 1 September 1895