The White Swan was located on the western side of St Johns Street. In the Gloucestershire licensing books of 1891 and 1903 the White Swan, a beer house with an annual rateable value of £11.4s.0d, is listed under the ownership of John William Watts. He was a businessman who ran his wholesale wine and spirit business in St Johns Street.

Courtesy John Saunders
Courtesy John Saunders

When John Watts died in 1921 the White Swan was offered for sale as part of his estate. It was described as a ‘stone built and slated single licensed house, with a double frontage of about 29 feet into St Johns Street, and with entrance at rear from Old Tramway Lane known as the White Swan, Coleford.’ On the ground floor there was a front bar, private bar, tap room, living room, cellarage and coal shed. The first floor comprised of two bedrooms and a sitting room and there were a further two bedrooms on the second floor. The details went on to say that ‘there is a good pump on the premises, and gas is laid on. It is now let to Miss Mary Fox on a Quarterly Tenancy, at the low rental of £16 per annum.’ In 1903 Mary Fox was the landlady of the Plough Inn at Coalway and, at that time, she also owned the Lamb Inn in Gloucester Road.

Wintle’s of Mitcheldean purchased the White Swan, and from 1930 beers were supplied from the Cheltenham Original Brewery following their acquisition of the Forest Brewery.  The final pints were pulled in the White Swan in the early 1950’s. Upon closure the landlord, Ken Morgan, is believed to have moved to the Masons Arms in Boxbush Road – just a few yards away.

The building is now occupied by the Tram Stop fish and chip shop at 19 St John Street.

Coleford Transport Festival

Landlords at the White Swan include:

1849 – White (a maltster)

1861 Elaine Paine (inn-keeper)

1865,1885 William Brain (fined in 1885 for permitting drunkeness)

1889 Bennett Taylor to Miss Clara Whittington

1891,1914 Alfred Webb

1937 Tom Hill

1939 William Aaron Knight

1940’s ? Ken Morgan

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