Thanks to funding from Dorset Archives Trust, DHC acquired an interesting if rather battered item at auction in November 2023. This was The Old Kings Arms Hotel, Dorchester, a short historical sketch (D-3353). Written in 1914 by notable antiquarian Harry Pouncy in large format paper typescript, it provides a fascinating account of one of the town’s most prominent (and only recently refurbished in 2019) establishments along with a series of vignettes charting significant events in its ‘stirring, variegated history’.
The document appears to be unique – no other copy is known (at least by DHC) to be in existence and sadly due to what appears to be heavy and frequent use, many of the pages have become badly worn and disbound. There are 13 pages of closely typed text, but there are clearly more pages which have unfortunately been lost. Nevertheless, what remains provides a wonderful glimpse into the life of a busy coaching inn over several centuries of operation. Ironically, the volume doesn’t mention Thomas Hardy, whose Mayor of Casterbridge features the Kings Arms with “the babble of voices, the jingle of glasses and the drawing of corks” although it’s possible that a section on Hardy would have been found in the missing pages.
The hotel was established in the 18th century. Pouncy suggests that it sits on the site of a much earlier ‘medieval hostelry’ although no evidence of this survives. The hotel was a coaching stop – one where teams of horses along with passengers on coach services could rest and recuperate. Mail coaches bound for London (thrice-weekly), Exeter and Southampton stopped at the hotel several times a week, and Pouncy notes that the hotel was sketched by notable artist and caricaturist Thomas Rowlandson, an image that can be found via a quick Google search. Pouncy also states that the earliest documented reference to the Kings Arms is in 1737. The hotel was the venue for a key Dorchester civic event the ‘Beef-steak Supper’ held every winter and was where various bodies held their celebratory meals including one that had Boer War hero Sir Redvers Buller as guest of honour.
Nelson and his Dorset flag-captain Sir Thomas Masterman Hardy passed in 1801 through Dorchester en route to Plymouth and had to make an emergency stop at the Kings Arms as Nelson ‘was taken so ill just before they arrived…that he thought he would have died’. Fortunately, Nelson prevailed. Prince Albert on a walking tour of Dorset accompanied by ‘guides, philosophers and friends’ stayed two nights at the Kings Arms in September 1856. Upon arrival, the proprietor of the day did not have sufficient accommodation for the party and told the Prince (whom he had not recognised) that he would have to ‘put up with a couch in the corridor’. The tableware used by Albert was displayed for many years afterwards in a glass cabinet in the hotel foyer. The last notable guest referenced in these pages was Lord Kitchener of Khartoum – who was described as a ‘firm believer in simplicity…[who]…arrived with only a single portmanteau’. Clearly, travelling light was something of an exception in the later 19th century.
This volume provides some interesting insights into the life of a Dorchester institution and its importance as both a meeting place for local people but as a staging post for many others.