THE Windsor Castle Hotel was established by Thomas Chalk Snr on land he secured at the corner of Franklin Street and Victoria square, Adelaide in 1850.

Chalk named his pub the Windsor Castle Hotel, for which he obtained a licence in September 1850.

Chalk was a doctor’s assistant on one of the East India Company’s clippers before immigrating to Australia with his wife and child by the ship Trusty, which left London on December 6, 1837, and reached Port Adelaide on May 15, 1838.

After the Victorian gold diggings broke out, he took his teenage son, Thomas Jnr to Forest Creek, leaving his wife in charge of the pub.

While on the goldfields, Chalk Snr died in 1852 and young Tom Chalk returned to Adelaide to assist his mother in running the pub. His mother conducted the Windsor Castle until 1855, when she sold the property to John Baker.

Although rebuilt and added to over the following decades, the Windsor Castle would trade from the corner for 104 years before its demolition and replacement with an office tower in 1954.

Drinks on House

In Adelaide on Monday evening Mr. C. Kerrison (licencee of the Windsor Castle  Hotel, Adelaide), left his six cylinder Chandler motor car, worth £1,000, standing in front of his hotel, and a few minutes afterwards he saw it disappearing. The car was afterwards discovered abandoned in one of the suburbs.

– The Narracoorte Herald (SA) Friday 13 May 1921

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Categories: Adelaide hotels, South Australia Hotels

Tags: Adelaide, Windsor Castle Hotel