There has been a hotel operating on the south west corner of Wellington Street and Alexandra Parade (formerly Reilly Street) Collingwood operating continuously from 1871 until the present day. During this time the hotel has operated under four different names:
Fox's Hotel 1871-1882 (presumably named after the
first licensee, John Fox)
Tower Hotel 1882-ca 1992 (renamed in reference to
the Shot Tower built nearby in 1882)
Office Inn ca 1992-2007
Fox Hotel 2007- present (reversion to a variant
of the original name).
Images
There are only
two images which give us a sense of what the hotel was like before the 20th
century renovations. A photograph from the 1890s (Mary Forde, Licensed
Victualler) is held by the Royal Historical Society of Victoria and is shown above. This shows a
much smaller brick double storeyed building with a timber cottage adjacent on
the Wellington Street frontage and another timber structure adjacent on the
Reilly Street frontage. The only other
representation, on the Melbourne and Metropolitan Board of Works map in 1900 suggests
that the timber building on Reilly Street was part of the hotel and behind it
there was a yard and hotel WCs. The hotel
was renovated in the interwar period and maybe that is when the footprint was
extended to its current dimensions.
History
This hotel must
be the only pub in Collingwood not to have engaged in illegal Sunday trading or
to have scandals attached to its name.
So reporting of it in the press is minimal and does not provide any
juicy stories. However investigating the
publicans is fascinating as they provide a microcosm in the history of one pub
of the type of people who were publicans. In this post we will be focusing on the ealiest publicans.
The first
licensee was John Fox, presumably
eponymous, but we know little about him and he was licensee for only a year or
so. However, there are a few licensees from
the 1880s onwards who are interesting.
James Michael Forde was supposedly publican from 1880-1891,
interestingly as he died in 1885! James Forde was a single man, who was born in Galway and emigrated to Melbourne with
his family at the age of 2. He took over the license in 1880 and saw the
marketing opportunity of the building of the Shot Tower in 1882 to change the
name of the hotel to the Tower. He died
very suddenly, an awful and untimely death from hydatids, in 1885 . He was 30
years old. Aside from his interest in the hotel, James owned houses and land in
Rathdowne Street Carlton and Wellington Street, Collingwood as well as four
other parcels of land in Carlton and Clifton Hill.
His will left
the effects, license and goodwill of the hotel (valued in probate at 350
pounds) to his sister Miss Mary Forde,
a single woman, who was licensee
until 22 December 1897. It is not known whether she had been party to running
the hotel previously, but given the will and that her address is given as
Wellington Street Collingwood, it is likely that this had been a brother and sister partnership before
James' death. There is an impression
from the will and from her role as executrix of other family wills that Mary
was the family business person. Mary
gave up the licence in December 1897 and within two years her sister Bidelia
and her mother Susan had died, and Mary herself died of uterine cancer in 1900.
She was 50 years old.
Did you know any members of the Forde family or are you related to them? We are always interested to hear from people with stories about the 101 hotels that have operated in Abbotsford, Clifton Hill and Collingwood.
