The genesis of the Cattle Market Inn at 13 Eastgate Square was the formation around 1869 of a road leading down to the new Cattle Market the creation of which had been approved by Parliament in June 1868.
The Devonshire Inn beer house run by James Stevens for many years was situated at the corner of Snag Lane (or Sway in 1868 paper) and at the entrance of the new road (now Market Road). He argued that it was in an ideal position to service the needs of customers if it was granted a spirit licence, many of whom had signed a ‘memorial’ in support of his application. Despite objections from neighbouring establishments the application was granted in August 1869 and the name of the beer house was changed to the Cattle Market Inn shortly thereafter.
Of later licensees one Henry Jacobs was recorded in the 1881 census as also trading as a bookbinder. The snowy scene of the Inn was taken in 1881. In 1888 it was the venue for a ‘smoking concert’ attended by forty or fifty of the ‘weed fraternity’ enjoying songs sung to an accompanying. At this time it was the meeting place for the “Pride of Sussex’ Lodge of the Royal Antediluvian Order of Buffaloes. The RAOB is one of the largest fraternal organisations in the United Kingdom believed to have been founded by stagehands and theatre technicians in 1882 at the Harp Tavern near Drury Lane.
The public bar sems to have been unsuitably positioned as it occasionally suffered damage by vehicles negotiating Eastgate. In 1942 the public bar was struck by a Service lorry creating a ‘blitzed’ appearance while in 1943 a case was brought against an RAF officer whose car collided with a 50 cwt lorry which mounted the path and took out the window and surrounding masonry. In the event the lorry driver was found at fault in the subsequent County Court case.
The inn was sold for retail use in 1988. The freehold, like The Bull, is held by Cassamo Holdings Ltd based in the Isle of Man and was leased to Turners Pies in 2016.
My father recalled a fist fight which broke out between black American GI’s and MPs outside in & then outside of the Eastgate in the 1940’s some time before D-day. I seem to recall there was segregation between Chichester pubs allocated to white and black American service personnel. A Chichester man my father ‘used’ the Eastgate when on leave and became friends with a New Yorker named A C Spades. On first meeting in the pub my father expressed disbelief that this was the black GI’s actual name and was shown his pay book as proof. What made AC so special was that he had seen my father’s American jazz heros in the flesh. United by a love of jazz and dislike of the MPs he and his friends took sides with the black servicemen in the brawl in that spilled out into Eastgate Square. My father’s last sight of AC was seeing him thrown into the back of a jeep and driven off. He recalled him with great fondness.