The History of The Victoria

Thomas William Coke bought the site for the Victoria Inn in 1837, the year in which the young Queen Victoria elevated him to the peerage, immediately after her accession to the throne. The name of the proposed new inn must have been inevitable.

The Victoria was not, however, the first inn in roughly the same position, for the property bought by the Earl in 1837 included the Albemarle Arms Inn, doubtless named in honour of his young second wife, whom he had married in 1822: Lady Anne Keppel, the daughter of his old friend, the Earl of Albemarle.

This inn had been opened by John Lack, whose family had owned the land for nearly one hundred years, since his great-grandmother had bought it in 1743. It had passed down through her son and grandson, both cordwainers, and hence to the third John Lack, a carpenter. In addition to the cottage that each in turn lived in, they owned three others, occupied chiefly by other members of the family.

The third generation John Lack, born in 1801, had married Hannah Allen, ten years his junior, in 1832. When his first two children were born in 1833 and 1834, he was still described as a carpenter. At some time within the next two years, however, he appears to have turned his cottage - where his father and grandfather had practised their trade as cordwainers - into 'The Albemarle Arms'. (He had mortgaged the four cottages for £100 in 1829, but this seems a few years too early to be connected with the establishment of the inn, unless for a while he was combining inn-keeping with carpentry.)

Then in August 1836, John and Hannah Lack agreed to sell the Albemarle Arms and the three adjacent cottages and land to the Earl of Leicester, for £600. Evidently John Lack had proved to be a successful inn keeper, for in return, the Earl covenanted 'to build for the said John Lack a public house near the Wells road with stables, bowling green and other suitable premises, at the cost of £600 and to give the same John Lack possession of the same at Midsummer now next ensuing and to grant him a lease of the same for 21 years'. The sale duly took place in September 1837, and two weeks later, the inn was leased back to Lack for a term of twenty-one years, at £30 p.a. - a large rent, compared to all the other village properties.

Left: the village c. 1780. Unfortunately there is no schedule to the map; Lack’s property was probably no.248 or 239. Below: the same area in 1843, showing the transformation of the village layout in the 1820s.

The new inn was not yet finished, for the Holkham account books then reveal frequent payments for work on 'John Lack’s new house'. The bowling green was laid, a well sunk, hearth-stones provided. The bricklayer who was responsible for the wall being built round the park also built that for 'the new public house'. Finally, in August 1838 the bricklayer was paid for 'bricklayers and plasterers work completing the Victoria Inn'. (It is not possible to trace whether the total cost was in fact £600, as most of the account book entries are too generalised).

So in return for selling the site to the Earl, John Lack became the tenant of a brand new inn. The Audit Books confirm this: John Lack paid his first rent for 'the New Public House' at Michaelmas 1838.

The lease to John Lack had called it 'the Albemarle Arms'. The Audit Books continued to call it merely 'the new public house' until 1851, but, as has been seen, in the Cash Book it was named the Victoria Inn from August 1838, and the property also appears on the official Tithe Map and Award in January 1839 as the Victoria Inn. In the 1840s it was sometimes known as the Victoria Arms.

The Audit Books also record rents from 'the New Inn', but this was the inn built some years earlier by T. W. Coke at the western edge of his newly-enlarged park, on the site of Model Farm, to accommodate visitors to the annual sheep shearings. Perhaps the re-planning and re-building which took place at the village at the staithe over several years from 1818 had increased the need for a public house there, to serve the villagers themselves.

It seems almost certain, therefore, that the present building was the one built in 1837-38. It is probably further north than the old Albemarle Arms, for the latter had been bounded on the north and west by gardens and land of the Earl of Leicester; by the road leading to estate cottages (probably the present Chapel Yard) on the south; and on the east partly by the road leading to the sea and partly by another property.

John Lack died in 1846, but his widow Hannah continued as the landlady. The 1851 census showed that her sister-in-law was the barmaid; they were assisted by a housemaid, cook and ostler. Hannah was still running the inn in 1871, nearly thirty-five years after it had opened. She lived there then with her unmarried son (who farmed 60 acres) and a barmaid, cook and housemaid.

By the time of the 1881 census, the son had married and he and his wife Augusta were running the inn. It was not long before disputes arose between the tenant and the estate office. Mrs. Lack wanted to vary the licence so that the inn could close on Sundays - to which Lord Leicester refused his consent; she objected to paying a 'voluntary' church rate, and wanted a reduction in rent. Finally, she was told, 'His lordship regrets that he is unable to agree to your request to be allowed to nominate or introduce a tenant for the inn in the event of your determination to leave it. Being so near it is of some importance to him personally to select the tenant'.

The Lack family left in 1883. The brewers Steward and Patteson (who already had a connection with various inns elsewhere on the estate) were asked to recommend a 'thoroughly respectable tenant'. The new tenant was George Young Smith, who had been tenant of the Royal Hotel at Mundesley. He immediately proposed some alterations in the building, of which the only one specified was altering the position of the bar counter. It had been intended that the tenant should continue to hold direct from the Earl, but be required to draw only Steward and Patteson beer. It was now quickly decided that it would be better for Steward and Patteson to hire the inn from the estate and advise on the alterations. Smith was still to be their tenant, and the Earl retained a veto on all future tenants.

This was the beginning of the connection of the Victoria with a series of public house groups for the next hundred years. In 1916 the Home Counties Public House Trust Ltd. was listed in the local directory as the licensee, and in later years it was a Trust House hotel. In the 1990s the tenant once again leased directly from the estate, as in John Lack's day.

Residential visitors to the hotel perhaps increased after the building of the railway through to Holkham in 1864, and at the turn of the century with the increase in motor cars, although Mrs. Augusta Lack complained in 1883 that 'the business does not pay expenses and the summer trade of late has been very bad'. Increasingly, the accommodation proved insufficient. In 1908 a force pump was installed, as 'the visitors complained very much of the present arrangement'. The situation of the urinal under the best bedroom window was also not too popular. (The mains water supply was installed in 1965).

In the 1930s, Steward and Patteson even considered transferring the licence to the Ancient House, when its tenancy fell vacant, as it was 'a more commodious building than the Victoria Hotel, where accommodation is so limited that it is difficult to provide adequately for resident guests and those calling for meals'. Indeed, the tenant of the Ancient House (which had been extensively modernised in 1885) thought his establishment attracted a better class of client than did the Victoria. In the event, however, Steward and Patteson agreed in 1935 to pay for an extension to the Victoria, and the installation of electric lighting, in return for an extended 35 year lease, to include the Ancient House as an annexe. The extension provided a larger coffee room and lounge 'at the coffee room end of the building', the conversion of the public bar into a saloon bar 'thereby obviating the drinking in the hall passage', and a new public bar, built out into the yard immediately adjacent to the old bar.

At this period the hotel had permission from the estate for a beach hut for the use of guests, who were issued with passes for the use of Lady Anne's Drive without paying the normal toll. There was strictly no access to the pinewoods or the drive behind the dunes. Similar passes were issued for 'bona fide guests' at the Victoria or the Ancient House to have pedestrian access to the park. In 1950 the hall was opened for public visits on Thursdays in July and August, the only days on which motor cars were allowed in the park. There was no access at other times: the management of the Victoria incurred the 5th Earl's displeasure for implying in their brochure that proximity to the hall and park was one of the hotel's attractions.

Lady Anne's Drive

The inspiration behind the Albemarle Arms probably lives on in the name of Lady Anne's Drive. T. W. Coke's young second wife, as the daughter of an earl, would have been known as Lady Anne. The road itself was certainly in existence by 1824 (two years after the marriage) when the cottage was built 'at the end of the new road in Holkham leading to the sea'. So far, however, no evidence has been found as to when it was first called Lady Anne's Drive.

Christine Hiskey
Holkham Archivist
May 2001

Sources used in the Holkham Archives: cash books, audit books, letter books, deeds, Estate office correspondence bundles and files, maps and plans.
Also census returns, parish registers, local directories.