Horsham's pub history documented in new project

The project won the Wimmera Mail-Times Horsham Tidy Towns award in the cultural heritage category.

It will now compete for state-wide honours.

Horsham Historical Society’s Lindsay Smith said the project documented the licensees of the pubs throughout the years.

‘‘The hoteliers have helped us put the last licensees together so we’re right up to date,’’ he said.

‘‘It’s been a good project.’’

Photographs of what the pubs have looked like throughout history, along with boards documenting the licensees, have been installed in the Commercial, the Bull and Mouth, the Exchange, the White Hart, the Victoria on the Park and the Royal hotels.

One of the most striking features of the historic photographs is the prevalence of expansive verandahs.

Mr Smith said a combination of legislative change and structural foundations contributed to the demise of the verandah in Horsham.

‘‘It’s unfortunate they were removed rather than saved for the historical values,’’ he said.

‘‘One of the problems was that a lot of the verandah posts were too close to the gutter.

‘‘We’ve got a great history in Horsham of wrecking everything.

‘‘The problem I find is that a lot of the early foundations had trouble because our ground moves.

‘‘The really early buildings – sometimes we burnt three or four at a time because they weren’t the nine-foot apart. There were many fires in early Horsham in the 1800s.’’

Mr Smith said there were a range of stories associated with the pubs of Horsham.

‘‘We had a good footballer here in the 1920s who was licensee at the Vic,’’ he said.

‘‘But he just couldn’t handle 6pm closing.

‘‘The police had an absolute gutful of him and he quickly had his wife added as the licensee.’’

Mr Smith encouraged people to take a walk throughout Horsham and visit the pubs to learn their history.