Description:By the eighteenth century Lichfield had a large number of public houses, with eighty innkeepers being recorded trading in the town in 1732. The public houses served travellers and also provided accommodation for troops quartered in the City. Records suggest that in 1779 there were over thirty men accommodated at the Hartshorne Inn.
The Sutherland collection includes a number of documents relating to repairs made to the Hartshorne Inn in 1810. A ‘Specification and Estimate for Repairs at the Hartshorne Inn’ states that parts of the walls and roof were to be taken down and replaced.
In addition to these structural repairs, ‘apart of the Chimney of the Kitchen and Parlour’ was to be rebuilt, and the floors of the kitchen, pantry and passage were ‘to be laid with new Quarry’. The Brewhouse floor was to have new ‘Bricks’ and the ‘Chamber and Parlour’ floors were to be relaid ‘with part new Timber’.
New window frames, sashes and shutters were required in the Parlour, and elsewhere in the Inn, and the entrance to the Inn was to have ‘new Doors’.
To find out more about renovations to the Hartshorne Inn, click on the images on the left.
Contextual Information From: 'Lichfield: From the Reformation to c.1800', A History of the County of Stafford: Volume 14: Lichfield (1990), pp. 14-24. URL: http://www.british-history.ac.uk/report.aspx?compid=42337.