M.L. Jordan was the owner of the George Inn in 1891. The licensed beer house was free from brewery tie. The annual rateable value in 1891 and 1903 was £18.0s.0d. and ‘time, gentleman please’ was called each night at 10 pm.
In the 1903 licensing book the ownership of the George Inn is documented as the Rock Brewery. Therein lies a bit of a mystery. Where was the Rock Brewery? There was a Rock Brewery in Aberdare, South Wales, who had nineteen tied houses in their pub estate. The logistics of transporting their beer across the Welsh Valleys into the depths of the Forest of Dean to an isolated pub seem to make no economic sense. There are vague references to a Rock Brewery at the New Inn in Waterley Bottom near Dursley. The Victoria Inn in St Pauls Road in Cheltenham also brewed their beer on the premises, sometimes referred to as the Rock Brewery. But why should small-scale ‘home brew’d’ pubs in either Waterley Bottom or Cheltenham want to own a pub that was miles away in the Forest of Dean?
Gloucester Journal, Saturday 27th October 1906 – Innkeepeer’s death: Mr M.F. Carter, coroner, held an inquest on Monday at Ruspidge, touching the death, which occurred on the 20th of William Thomas, 60, landlord of the George Inn, Ruspidge. Deceased, on the 4th, drove home from Newnham in a small pony trap, and ovdertook Thomas Bignall, haulier, Ruspidge, in charge of a wagon and two horses. The last-named had stopped his team at the bottom of a pitch to take off the skid-pan, and in endeavouring to pass, deceased struck the hind wheel of the wagon and he was thrown out. Deceased said he was not much hurt and drove home alone. The evidence of Dr. Henry was that three ribs were broken on the right side, the jagged edge of one of which wounded the lung, causing an escape of air into the plural cavity, producing collapse of the lung and death.
The George later passed into the ownership of Arnold Perrett’s Wickwar Brewery and, in 1937, it was acquired by the Cheltenham Original Brewery.
Anecdotal evidence suggests that at the age of 84, Kate Glover did not get on well with decimalisation, hence closing three months after the switch over!
Landlords at the George Inn include:
1891 George Evans
1902,1903 John Henry Jones (beer retailer in 1902)
1906 William Thomas
1939 David Jesse Glover
