Published in Windlesora 22 (2006)
© WLHG
Soldiers in the distant past did not live in barracks as they do today, but in the inns and public houses of the towns they were quartered in. Not that England ever had much of an army before the Civil War. Between 1642 and 1643 both King and Parliament raised fighting forces by engaging “trained bands’, which one colonel wrote were ‘guilty of all kinds of indiscipline and violence -robbery, arson, spoiling, drunkenness, abusive behaviour and all kinds of debaucheries’ . (1)
During the Civil War, Windsor became a garrison of the Parliamentary army and St George’s keep was a military jail.(2) In April 1643 16,000 infantry and 3,000 cavalry soldiers of this ‘unruly army’ marched out of Windsor to Reading.’ (3) What impression they had made in the town is not recorded, but Windsorians probably heaved a great sigh of relief. However, their jubilations came too soon!
One year later, in 1644 Parliament created what is known as the New Model Army. It consisted of 14,000 infantry, 6,600 cavalry and 1,000 dragoons. Again it was in Windsor that they were drilled and kitted out.(4) Cromwell’s men were said to be honest, sober Christians, but that did not stop them from killing and eating 500 of the deer and stags roaming in Windsor Park; one gamekeeper was killed by a trooper when he interfered.(5) Many of these soldiers lived in the inns and taverns of Windsor, others in the castle, in private houses or in tents in the Great Park. We know that in 1686 Windsor had 32 inns and alehouses which provided 329 beds and stabling for 669 horses.(6) In 1644 this number may have been even larger, (in 1660 there were at least 38 publicans). It is unlikely that common soldiers would have occupied any of the 329 beds; they had to sleep in the hay lofts above the stables. Officers stayed in the larger and more comfortable inns of the town. But innkeepers were not enamoured of their guests, especially as they had to lend each soldier 6d a day in lieu of his pay, and government was never very punctual in repaying this loan. Nor were quartering charges ever paid on time. Windsor innkeepers were concerned about their image; even then Windsor was a tourist town and publicans did not want their hostelries full of unruly soldiers. Billeting of soldiers however, continued even after the Civil War. Therefore in 1660, when the monarchy was restored, 38 publicans appealed to the king to ease their burden of quartering. They claimed that some 300 soldiers were still billeted upon them. (7)
Windsor was then a small market town with a population of about 1500. Hearth tax returns of 1664 show that there were 271 huseholds of which only 71 were comparatively poor. (8) 300 soldiers would represent one fifth of this population, but soldiers also brought with them a host of camp-followers, women, children, sutlers etc., which could almost double the military invasion of the town. Much of their leisure time revolved around the public houses of Windsor and its neighbourhood.
Charles II seems to have taken note of the local innkeepers; by 1679 (no one seems to know exactly when it was built) a small guardhouse had been erected in Windsor Castle. It was sited at the back of St George’s Chapel behind the Deanery and contained a public house called the Royal Standard. A water-colour by Paul Sandby dated 1760 shows the Guardhouse with a signs over the doorway advertising ‘Coffie and Tea’. (9) The small Windsor garrison was quartered here during the late 17th and 18th centuries, but this did not mean that the public houses of Windsor were exempt from quartering soldiers.
Windsor was on the marching route for regiments who were continually moved from one place to another in an effort to police the country. Before local police forces were established during the 1830s and 40s it was the role of the army to fulfil this very unpopular duty. The town’s inns and taverns had to billet soldiers on the march on a regular basis, if only for one night. But as regiments marched in company order, each night a different section of the regiment would arrive at their billets, until they had all passed through.
The wars with France at the end of the 18th century, and the consequent huge increase in the armed forces, finally prompted the Government to build permanent quarters for soldiers. Windsor saw the building of two barracks within five years; the Infantry Barracks in Sheet Street were completed in 1799 and the Cavalry Barracks on the Spital Road, (now St Leonard’s Road) in 1804. The barracks certainly lessened the problem of long term billeting soldiers in public houses, but it did not remove it altogether until well after the Crimean War. In 1856 the Windsor newspaper reported that there was much discontent among innkeepers; in1854 and 1855, ‘in consequence of large numbers of volunteers to the 97th and 94th Regiments of Foot quartered in the Infantry Barracks, up to 500 soldiers had to be billeted in public houses of the town for protracted periods. (10) The Ordnance Department had to rent a lodging house from the Windsor Royal Society ‘to relieve the town from the pressure of the billet. (11) One solution was to enlarge the barracks. In 1866 just one year before the huge extension of the Infantry Barracks was completed Mr Wheeler, landlord of the Wellington and Mr Nicholls of the Clarence Inn attended before the magistrates to complain about the haphazard billeting system, and asked for proper records to be kept.(12) It seems that some of the larger and more prosperous inns had managed to bribe themselves out of the billeting rota.
But there was another role public houses played in garrison towns. There is ample evidence that soldiers were the most regular customers of the town’s taverns and beer houses. 19th century British barracks were soul-less and grim, and soldiers were only too eager to escape the boredom of the barrack room. Besides drink, soldiers were also looking for the type of female company offering their services in public houses. The average soldier spent the little cash he had left after stoppages for clothes and rations, in the public house; every soldier was entitled to 1d beer money a day, even if his stoppages exceeded his income. 1d every day multiplied by an average of 1,000 soldiers quartered in Windsor throughout the 19th century kept many a local publican solvent. The army tried to cash in on this bonanza by providing canteens in barracks, but as they were usually as cheerless as the rest of the barracks, soldiers preferred to get their entertainment in town.
The public house was also the main contact point between soldiers and civilians, which often led to brawls and fights, no doubt fuelled by alcohol. Some public houses simply banned soldiers from their premises, once they were no longer obliged to billet them. Above one hostelry in London’s Oxford Street used to hang a sign proclaiming: ‘servants in livery, dogs and soldiers will not be admitted’. (13)
Brigitte Mitchell
Sources
- John Laffin, Tommy Atkins (Stroud, 2004), p. 18.
- W.H.Dixon, Royal Windsor, Vol.IV (London, 1880), p.270
- Raymond South, Royal Castle Rebel Town (Buckingham, 1981), p.35.
- Laffin, Tommy Atkins, p.19.
- Tighe & Davis, Annals of Windsor Vol. I (London, 1858), p.186
- National Archives, WO 30 48, An abstract of a particular account of all inns and alehouses in England with their stabling, rooms and bedding in the year 1686.
- National Archives, WO 40 3, Petitions by Innkeepers, 1660.
- Shelagh Bond, ed. The First Hall Book of the Borough of New Windsor, 1653-1725 (1968), Vol.1, p.xi
- Jane Roberts, Views of Windsor, Watercolours by Thomas and Paul Sandby (1995) p45
- Windsor and Eton Express Newpaper files, 5 Jan. 1856.
- Windsor and Eton Express, 10 May 1856. 12. Windsor and Eton Express,
- May 1866. 13. Parish Magazine Holy Trinity Church, Berkshire Record Office D/P 166 28 A/2/1- 10, Sept. 1884, p.303.
Windsor Local History Group 