The site of the present Thai restaurant at the junction of Eastgate Square, between St Pancras and The Hornet was the location for the Unicorn Inn the title deeds for which, when owned by Messrs Henty and Constable, go back to the year 1741.

It was, with two short breaks the home of the ancient body the Mayor and Corporation of St. Pancras since its foundation in 1689. This was a mock corporation to celebrate and commemorate the overthrow of the Roman Catholic James II and the succession of the Protestant William of Orange following his landing in this country. Every year the corporation held a banquet with ‘plentiful supply of wine and ale, and everything provided to content the stomach’. So drunk did the members become that apprentice boys had to push them home in wheelbarrows – hence the nickname of the corporation –The Wheelbarrow Club – which survives to this day and is arguably the oldest dining club in Britain.

Chichester was not a healthy place in the 19th century suffering the worst cases of typhoid and consumption of any town in the whole country. There was huge debate between two opposing groups of local residents dubbed the ‘drainers’ and the ‘non or anti drainers’. The Anti-Drainage Party met at the Inn In 1889 to oppose the plans to install main drainage which was proposed to address the dampness of the City’s soil and the consequent tendency of the climate to promote phthisis or consumption. Opponents saw it as an unnecessary expense, a way to line the pockets of others and could be avoided by registration of cesspools and improving their maintenance. As one commented ‘a bucket of water or urine thrown on the ground would spread itself over the ground, be dried in the sun, and in a short time there would be nothing to see or smell’. In the event half the city’s houses were connected to mains drainage by 1896.

In 1889 The City Police Force held a dinner in the Inn to celebrate their extinction as a separate body since by the County Government Act the city, as far as the police are concerned, now came under the control of  the West Sussex County Authority.

Due to the need to widen the roads in the vicinity owners Henty and Constable (Brewers) with architects Whitehead and Whitehead and builders Patching and Co of Worthing redeveloped the site in the late 1930s to create a new Unicorn ‘Hotel’ which ‘set a new standard even among improved licensed premises’. The war memorial was moved from Eastgate Square to Litton Gardens in 1940.

Gracie Fields and actor George Graves visited the city in the 30s and selected the Unicorn Hotel for ‘rest and refreshment’ whereas Miss Evelyn Laye preferred the Village Hotel at Itchenor for the summer vacation. In 1939 it was one location for Air Raid Precaution (ARP) Wardens to test their readiness – the Unicorn being ‘wrecked’ with four persons trapped and injured.

The Hotel was the drinking hole for RAF pilots during the second world war. An American pilot, Robin Olds, on an exchange program with the RAF visited in 1946 and noted the range of photographs and drawings on the wall depicting those such as Sailor Malan, Douglas Bader and Stanford Tuck who were heroes to him when a young cadet in 1940.

The Unicorn closed as a pub in 1960s and up to 1994 the building was leased to the Chichester Festival theatre as the Minerva Studios). It became the offices of the Observer paper until 2015, then laid dormant until occupied by the restaurant.