The Anchor Inn was located at Shakesfield, just to the north of Dymock, on the Hereford and Gloucester canal where it crossed the Leominster road.
The canal opened in 1798 following the completion of the 2192 yard Oxenhall tunnel and emerged in a deep cutting near Boyce Court and its northwards course passed immediately west of Dymock village before curving by the Old Grange and Tiller’s green to adopt a route close to the river Leadon.
The Anchor Inn was probably built at the same time as the Hereford and Gloucester canal, initially serving the navvies constructing the canal and later boatmen. It is known that the landlord of the Anchor Inn in 1851 was also a coal dealer, so barges might call at the inn for fuel and, no doubt, liquid refreshment.
However, the life of the canal was short-lived and the Great Western Railway utilised much of the course of the waterway for their Gloucester to Ledbury line which opened in 1885. The GWR Dymock station was closer to the village, and the so the Anchor must have suffered from a decline in trade.
In the twelve years from 1891 to 1903 the Anchor Inn was trading as a free house, and the annual rateable value of the beer house was £14.0s.0d. Elizabeth Jones is listed as the owner in 1891, with W.A. Welsh in occupancy, and George Jones the owner in 1903, with Rose Ann Welsh as the occupying landlady. Closing time was at 10 pm.
I have found no other records pertaining to the Anchor Inn suggesting that it had closed before the First World War.
Hereford Journal, Saturday 25th June 1870 – Suspicious death of the wife of a publican: An inquest was held at the George Inn, Dymock, on Tuesday, before Morris F. Carter, Esq., coroner, and a jury, of whom Mr. East was foreman, on the body of Ann, wife of John Walter White Welsh, landlord of the Anchor beerhouse, Dymock. The jury having viewed the body, which was much discoloured, the following evidence was adduced.
John Miller said : I keep the post-office at Dymock. I knew Ann Welsh, and recollect the night of the 14th. I was at the Anchor, and I heard a quarrel with Welsh and his wife, He chastised her for riding home with Thomas Jones. He was quite drunk. She did not deny riding home with Jones, but most strenuously denied having acted with any impropriety. Welsh threatened the deceased he would “cut her — throat,” aad that he would cut her head off. The deceased said nothing then, but she afterwards charged him with having before illused her, and said she carried a mark on her breast. He threatened to strike her again, but did not. The deceased afterwards said that when sober a “better husband or kinder father than Welsh could not exist, but when he was drunk he was a mad man.”
Louisa Palmer, the wife of George Palmer, said that on the 7th of June she saw Mrs. Welsh at night. About two days after she opened her bosom and showed witness a mark on her left breast, but did not say how it was done. Witness heard a boy crying on that night, and he asked her to go up. She went up and saw Mrs Welsh, who was crying bitterly, and who asked her to go and fetch her little boy. The husband was not sober. He said nothing, but went out. The wife made no complaint then, but in two days afterwards she said she would show him (meaning Welsh) the marks when he was sober. She (witness) did not know of any other act of violence. The Coroner examined the witness as to whether she had told the policeman a different tale.
Eliza Minchin, wife of George Minchin, said on Friday, the 10th of June, she was coming by the Anchor Inn at night, when she heard a great row and scuffling there. She thought she heard the children cry out, “Don’t, father!”
The Coroner said he did not want to know what the witness thought, and, on being pressed, she said it was, – “Don’t father,” or “Oh! father,” and thought she heard blows.
The Coroner remarked that the witness seemeod reluctant to act up to her oath, and asked her if she heard swearing and bad language, but she said she heard the words, “B——you,” and heard Mrs. Welsh say, “Oh! John Welsh.” She saw the servant, Clara Mann, going down the village; she was crying. Did not see Mrs. Welsh.
Jeremiah Jones was called, but he did not answer. Dr Matthew Ross Smith was next called and he said. I held a post-mortem examination of the deceased yesterday. I did not observe any external marks of violence. I saw her on the 16th, about seven o’clock in the morning, before she died. Her husband was not present. She complained of a violent pain in the side and the bowels. | had attended her previously for general debility, I found most of the general organs below the usual weight. There was also an adhesion of the pleura (the effect of former disease) with effusion in the cavities of the chest and aorta. Two gall stones, which I now produce (as large as boys’ marbles), were found in the liver, which would account of the acute pain the deceased suffered. On opening the bag of the heart I found it small and flabby, and eight or ten ounces of effusion in the bag. The heart was empty, showing great debility; the stomach and bowels were also empty, no food having been taken for several days. The deceased was altogether in a diseased state.—By the Coroner : The stones were of long standing. Syncopic effusion, from the diseased state of the deceased, was the immediate cause of death. Fear, a shock, or any illusage, would tend to accclerate death. I apprehended danger when I first saw her.
Clara Mann, the servant, was next examined. She said she had been there about a month. On Friday week Welsh was at home at night, and there was a row between him and his wife. He was in a great passion and cursed and swore. She saw Eliza Minchin, but she (witness) was not crying. She was going to fetch Mrs Burrup.
On the Coroner asking witness what she was going to fetch Mr. Burrup for, she refused to say, and upon being urged to tell the truth she said it was to “quiet Welsh’; the children ran out, fearing their father would strike their mother. This witness testimony was given very evasively. The Coroner designated it as “disgraceful,” and asking her if Welsh had been talking to her. She strenuously denied, however, that he or anybody else had been tampering with her.
Dr. Smith said he wished to add to his evidence that there was “a great want of tone” in the vessels, and it was accordingly added to his evidence.
John Welsh said: I am the son of the deceased. I do not recollect a great row between father and mother on Friday week. I was at Mrs. Burrup’s. I have never seen father strike mother, (Welsh here made a remark and laughed, upon which the Coroner severly admonished him.) The little boy gave other evidenve entirely contradicting the former witnesses.
John Walter White Welsh, the deceased’s husband, was then sworn. He said: “I do not recollect anything I did on the 14th. The Coroner said: It is my duty to caution you that you need not say anything to criminate yourself. The witness went on to say : I was so drunk I cannot contradict any of the evidence. I sometimes have a “bit of a flirt”with drunkenness for several days. I will not swear whether I struck my wife on the 14th, or not; my drunkeness takes all my recollections away. I will not swear I have not struck my wife in the month of June. I have five children.
The Coroner, in summing up, told the jury he thought it necessary to hold the inquest in the interest of the public, the deceased, and Welsh himself. After defining the law relating to murder and manslaughter, and mentioning what a difficult thing it was to get the truth from witnesses in a case of this sort, he said he had no doubt that the girl Clara Mann, actuated by fear, had not told all she knew. Then, again, the Coroner noticed what a painful thing it was to call the little boy in evidence against his father, whom of course he would wish to screen. Looking at the medical evidence, he said, although the man was morally guilty of manslaughter, the safer verdict for them to give would be in accordance with the medical testimony, As to whether death was accelerated by the brutal illtreatment of the husband he left it for the jury to say.
The public then retired, and, upon being admitted again in about five minutes, the foreman of the jury gave in a verdict in accordance with the medical evidence as to the immediate cause of death, but said they thought it was accelerated by the brutal conduct of the husband; and they further wished to state that they considered him morally, but not legally, guilty of manslaughter.
The Coroner then sent for Welsh, and told him he perfectly with the verdict of the jury, and he hoped the narrow escape he had had of being committed to take his trial for manslaughter or murder would be a warning to him not to get in such a fearful state of drunkenness again, as made it an insult to brute beasts to compare them with him, for he was infinitely worse. This brutality, although not the immediate cause of the death of his wife, had accelerated it, and there could be no two opinions about it. He hoped he was sorry for what he had done, and for the sake of her who was gone, the mother of his children—those five poor children—he hoped he would for the future lead a better life.