Joseph Troughton was the owner of the Elephant & Castle in 1891, which was then free from brewery tie. Godsell & Sons of the Salmon Springs brewery in Stroud had acquired the Elephant & Castle by 1903. The premises licence was for a beer house and it had an annual rateable value of £17.0s.0d.

The Elephant & Castle was on the north side of Tewkesbury Road and was situated between Hope Street (then Stanhope Street) and Waterloo Street. This equates to the approximate location of Tewkesbury Road Post Office. The address in the 1939 Kelly’s Directory is given as 77/78 Tewkesbury Road. The Elephant & Castle closed its doors for the final time about the same time c.1939, it was then a Stroud Brewery pub.

Upon closure there were still plenty of other pubs nearby to slake your thirst in Tewkesbury Road. Godsell’s had been taken over by the Stroud Brewery in 1928 and their beers could be sampled just a few yards away at the Railway Inn near Worcester Street. Historically the Tewkesbury Road ‘pub crawl’ attained the dubious distinction of the highest concentration of pubs in a small area, quite an achievement for those foolhardy enough for the challenge. Although the list of pubs may not be entirely contemporary with each other, the late 1930’s crawl from the ‘gas works tower’ near the Townsend Street / High Street junction would have included supping pints at the Golden Cross, Cross Keys, Cleveland Arms, White Horse, Queens Head, Old Anchor Inn, Barley Mow, Elephant & Castle, Brewers Arms, Worcester Arms, Railway Inn, Vauxhall Arms and Bridge Inn. A grand total of a maximum thirteen pubs between the High Street and the Midland Railway line… and returning back towards the town centre on the south side near the gas works was the Brave Old Oak, perhaps ending up at the Adam & Eve in Townsend Street for a fifteenth pint!

Landlords at the Elephant & Castle include:

1844, 1851 John James Taylor (snr)

1861 John Taylor (jnr)

1870 Mrs Elizabeth Taylor (wife of John)

1878, 1903 Henry Cousins

1939 Frederick J. Reeves

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