LOCATED in the NSW Hunter Valley, the Royal Hotel at Singleton, is one of the region’s oldest pubs, established in 1859, and offering hospitality for over 165 years.
Today the pub provides bistro dining, a large beer garden, motel rooms, a drive-thru bottle shop, TAB, Keno, and free Wi-Fi, and is located conveniently near local wineries and other attractions.
We stayed overnight and spent the evening having a few drinks in this historic pub in 2017 before going on to explore the Hunter Valley’s wineries. It’s a classic Australian pub with modern comforts, providing meals seven days a week in a relaxed setting, featuring both indoor and outdoor seating options.
The Royal Hotel was opened by 57-year-old Harry Hewitt and his second wife, 37-year-old, Margaretta on July 1, 1859.
Harry often boasted of being the first publican in the Hunter River Valley, and on having “built and occupied more hotels than any other man in the colony”. Although these claims are likely a bit of a stretch, he was no doubt a pioneering publican.
Harry gained a license for his first pub, the Angel Inn, at the age of 28 in Mailtland. He was born in London about 1802 before arriving in Sydney at the age of 21 aboard the ship “Andromeda” in 1823. He married Sophia Markwell in 1825 before gaining his first pub in Maitland in the late 1820s. However, he wasn’t the first licensee of the Angel Inn, which had been established in 1826.
Former convict Molly Morgan is credited with building the Angel Inn. Although the Angel Inn was built by Molly Morgan, she did not hold the publican’s license herself. She applied unsuccessfully for a license to sell spirits in 1828. Thomas Hunt applied for a publican’s license at the end of 1828.
Our Harry, now in his late 20s, gained the license of the Angel Inn about 1829. He remained as host until the completion in September 1831 of his newly built Albion Inn.
The Albion was the fourth Inn to be built in West Maitland. The first was the Angel Inn, then the Rose Inn and another one built of slabs, logs and bark on the corner of Hunter Street were all established in the late 1820s.
From the Albion, Harry went onto host the Brook Inn at Wollombi in the 1840s, and the famous Mount Dangar Inn on the Goulburn Road.
The Mount Dangar Inn was a significant coaching stop on the Old Hume Highway (the major route from Sydney to Melbourne via Goulburn). It was located near Breadalbane, south of Goulburn, NSW, around the 1840s, serving travellers heading towards Yass and beyond from Goulburn’s growing centre
From the Mount Dangar Inn, Harry established a new pub at ‘Glennies Creek’ in 1853. He hosted the Queen Victoria Inn at Glennies Creek, Singleton from 1853 to 1855, before gaining a brewers license for Singleton in 1856. Later that year he was granted the license of the Rose Hotel, George Street, Singleton.
The Rose Inn was described as containing 13 rooms, with hall, pantry, a spacious bar, with a fine stone cellar, three parlours, a dining room, seven well-ventilated bedrooms, and a splendid large and lofty ball-room 40 x 20 feet.
Detached from the hotel was a a two-storey brick building with a balcony in front. The building contained a servants’ room, kitchen, and store room. On second floor there were two bedrooms, and a “fine large room 22 feet by 15 feet”.
Harry Hewitt began building yet another pub in 1859. His new Royal Hotel, opposite the Rose Inn, at Singleton was completed for opening on July 1, 1859.
After the death of his first wife Sophia in 1840, Henry married Margaretta Fisher in 1852, and had another two children, to his already large family. Harry and Margaretta went to host the Royal at Singleton for the following 11 years before retiring as hosts in 1871.
Harry built a grand pavilion beside the Royal in 1863. He purchased the temporary pavilion erected to hold a ball and dinner to celebrate on May 7 1863 the arrival of the railway to Singleton. The Maitland Mercury reported on May 19, 1863:
The Royal Pavilion Theatre.—Mr. Henry Hewitt, of the Royal Hotel, having purchased the pavilion lately erected for the railway ball and dinner, intends to con-vert the same into a theatre. In order to make the building suitable for that purpose it will have to be nearly rebuilt. A neat front will be put up, and it will be covered in with a substantial iron roof. It is estimated that the new theatre will hold between four and five hundred persons, and eight hundred if the seats are removed. The want of such a building for meetings, balls, dinners, &c., has long been felt in Singleton, and the worthy host of the “Royal” deserves the thanks and the encouragement of the community, for the spirited manner in which he has endeavoured to provide for their amusement.
Old Harry loved a tune, and often would perform his favourite song “The Beautiful Boy” at district concerts – including his new pavilion. He seems to have overly invested in pubs, and was forced to give-up the Royal Hotel at Singleton in December 1871 after falling into financial difficulties. A story published in the Maitland Mercury after his death on February 23, 1892 revealed:
“Poor old Harry, as he was familiarly called, unfortunately for himself, speculated rather too freely in bricks and mortar—a weakness which has sent more than one good man up King-street—and although he struggled on for years, he had at last to succumb, and give up the Royal, ending his long and eventful life in the house of a loving and good son residing on the Goulburn River.”
Henry Hewitt died on September 2, 1877 at the residence of his son, Ferndale Denman, aged 75. His widow Margaretta hosted the Hinter River Hotel at East Maitland for a number of years after Harry’s death. She died aged 59 in 1881.
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Categories: Australian Hotels, NSW hotels, Publicans
I spent many a Saturday afternoon in this Hotel. Lived not fare away and the mob I was working with it was their drinking hole. Have some good memories of the place as well as a few hang-overs that were not quite what I wanted at the time.
Thanks for your comment, Kenneth. I’ve got to agree, it’s a top pub, with plenty of history.