Castle Hotel, York

The Crown Grant for the land on which the Castle Hotel stands was originally granted to John Henry Monger Snr on 3 November 1852 for £11. He also took a grant of the property to the rear for £11.[2]

The original part of the current building which is called the Castle Hotel (right hand side on Avon Terrace) was constructed in 1853 for Samuel Craig using ticket-of-leave men from the York Convict Hiring Depot.[3][lower-alpha 2]

By September 1853, Craig was trading as the Castle Hotel and the York Agricultural Society held a meeting there.[4]

Castle Hotel in about October 1877, from a panorama photograph taken by James Manning for the Paris Exhibition 1878. The rise in Avon Terrace was removed in 1907.[5]

Title was transferred from John Henry Monger to Samuel Craig in December 1853 for £20.[6][lower-alpha 3] Monger remained the owner of the property to the rear though it is now part of the hotel site.

Samuel Craig announced the opening of the old section of the Castle Hotel on 1 November 1854, promising “the largest and choicest selection of wines, spirits, etc ever brought over the hill”.[7] From that time on, all the meetings of the York Agricultural Society were held at the Castle Hotel and it became their unofficial headquarters.[8]

An advertisement dated 20 December 1855 published on 23 January 1856 promotes “excellent beds. Good Stabling, and an ostler always in attendance. Private upstairs sitting and bedrooms. Superior wines, spirits, cordials, ale and porter etc, kept in a spacious, cool cellar, always on hand. Commodious stockyards and enclosures.”[9]

Praise was given to Samuel Craig in a newspaper of the day in September 1856:“Mr Craig has deserved well for the way in which his rooms, and especially the bedrooms, are arranged for light, air, and cleanliness; and although the other hotel-keepers are not chargeable with any want of the latter, they do not keep pace with the times; there is a visible want of progress about them in comparison with the Castle Hotel.[10]

The hotel survived the flood of July 1862 when the water was three feet deep in the cellar.[11] The hotel was extended with a "large addition" to the south of the original in 1862,[12] virtually doubling the premises.[13]

This extended and older part of the hotel was described in 1966 as "an almost perfectly preserved coaching inn complex complete with kitchen, meat house, laundry, bathrooms, forge, stables, and fodder house clustered round a broad, generous courtyard at the back".[14]

Samuel's wife, Mary Craig became the licensee in November 1869[15] and a month later, Samuel Craig died.[lower-alpha 4][16] The business continued under the reins of Mary, who was referred to as the “hostess” of the Castle Hotel.[17][lower-alpha 5]

The royal coat of arms was painted on the wall of the dining room of the Castle Hotel around this time. This insignia was revealed during 1989 renovations to the hotel when one of the walls was stripped of its old paint.[19] The coat of arms was probably painted on the wall for a visit or stay of a Governor. A most likely occasion for this was when Governor Sir Frederick Weld visited York and stayed at the Castle Hotel on 21 October 1869, because the whole town made an enormous fuss of the Governor on this visit.[lower-alpha 6]

From July 1883,[lower-alpha 7] Mary's son Frank was managing the hotel.[22] In December 1884, Mary Craig leased the hotel to Frank.[23] Frank constructed a separate building on the corner "for the purpose of banquetting".[lower-alpha 8] [24]

On 12 November 1885, a fire broke out in the yard of the Castle Hotel, burning a haystack, a dray, some timber and about 10 tons of sandalwood, all worth over £250.[25] On 29 January 1888, a Mr D’Elmaine was staying at the Castle Hotel and went out onto the balcony for some fresh air. A draft came in the door and blew flames from a candle onto the things on his bed which caught alight. The fire was put out but the whole of his bedding was burnt.[26]

Frank Craig added a billiard room to the hotel in 1887.[27]

In 1892, for a short period Cobb & Co ran a coach from York to the Yilgarn, with bookings at the Castle Hotel.[28]

On 11 November 1892, quoting the Eastern Districts Chronicle:[29]

a man named Peter Donnolley, employed as ostler at the Castle Hotel, had made application to Mr. Frank Craig, the landlord, for drink to be supplied to him. This he was refused as he had been previously supplied with two or three glasses of liquor. Not satisfied with this Donnolley made repeated requests to be served, and refusing to leave the bar to attend to his duties Mr. Craig endeavoured to quietly eject him. This evidently enraged Donnolley who with an open pen-knife attacked Mr. Craig, and succeeded in stabbing him in the stomach the full length of the blade, following up with an oath congratulating himself upon having achieved his end. Moving away Mr. Craig experienced a peculiar feeling, which turned out to be blood emanating from the wound. The police were at once summoned, and Donnolley was arrested, a knife being found in his possession.

A few weeks later, Frank Craig handed the business over to his brother William T Craig,[30] who renovated the premises.[31] William handed over to his brother James and May Craig in 1896.[32][lower-alpha 9]

Castle Hotel in 1904 with a sign "M Craig" ("M" being for May).

May continued to run the hotel after James' accidental drowning while at sea in 1902.[34]

May constructed the corner building in 1905 and 1912.[35] The architect was William G Wolf, a several times bankrupt American architect who had been designing buildings in Melbourne and Sydney and had just completed the design and construction of His Majesty's Theatre (1902 to 1904).[36]

The key authors on Australian architectural style describe the Castle Hotel as “a corner pub screened with loggia-like verandah” and they included the hotel as an exemplar of Federation Filigree style.[37]

May leased the hotel to Thomas Charles Evans[lower-alpha 10] in March 1905, taking control again in 1915.[39] May died on 7 January 1924[40] and left the hotel to her son Basil, who continued to run the hotel.[41]

The bar of the Castle Hotel was the scene of a murder on 17 April 1953 when market gardeners from two feuding Albanian families attacked each other and one was fatally stabbed.[42]

The Craig family continued to own and run the hotel until 1990, extensively restoring and enlarging the hotel. Only the stables were damaged in the 1968 Meckering earthquake.[43]

• York Municipal Inventory, 31 December 1995
• Classified by the National Trust, 5 March 1985
• Register of the National Estate Permanent, 21 March 1978