The first mention I’ve found of the Queen’s Head Inn, Church Street North, Liskeard, is when, on June 7, 1865, Frederick Belbin, a 31-year-old ‘Scales Maker’, obtained goods and money, valued at £1 5s 6d, by false pretences from Charles Couch, the Landlord. Belbin was sentenced to eight months hard labour. Less than one year later it was reported in the Pawnbroker’s Gazette that Bankruptcy proceedings had commenced against Charles Couch, this event led to John James starting his eventful 36 years tenure as Landlord of the Queen’s Head.

The 1871 census lists: John James (33, ‘Innkeeper’), Elizabeth (34, wife), William (10) and John ‘8’, both ‘Scholars’, and Thomas Hill (Lodger, 54, Labourer). In the same year, a John Barrett was fined five shillings by the Magistrates for attracting a crowd by shouting and inviting people to fight him, outside the Queen’s Head in Church Street North.

Also in 1871, John James himself appeared before the Magistrates accused of ‘allowing his house to be open and selling excisable liquors during illegal hours’. Worse was to come, in September 1893 the police ‘objected to the renewal of the licence of John James at the Queen’s Head Inn, Church Street North’. James had been convicted and fined £5 plus costs in the previous June for ‘allowing prostitutes to remain on his premises longer than was necessary for the purpose of obtaining reasonable refreshments’ and was ‘still making his house a resort for persons of bad character’.

John James was able to keep his licence and continued as Landlord until his death in 1901, aged 63. Whereupon his son, also named John James, took over the licence from his father. Renewal of the licence was finally refused by the Magistrates in June 1926 after Police Superintendent J.H. Drew reported that the Queen’s Head was ‘a very small building, not larger than an ordinary cottage. The whole was in a bad state of dilapidation’. In his opinion, the Queen’s Head was ‘not required for the needs of the local inhabitants’, which were being met by the nearby more respectable Barley Sheaf.

By Brian Oldham, Liskeard Museum volunteer and Bard of the Gorsedh Kernow