Alnwick (Clayport) - Clayport Tower Inn

Name: The Clayport Tower Inn

Address: Clayport, Alnwick

1932 Aerial Photo

The photo above shows the Clayport Tower Inn, which is the building on the right which appears to have whitewashed walls at ground floor level, and behind it to the left, you can just make out Spours' Yard.

1864 Town Plan
Clayport Tower Inn & Pack Horse PH

The Clayport Tower Inn was a relatively short-lived 19th-century pub that sat opposite the historic medieval Clayport Tower before the gate was demolished in 1804 to improve traffic and access. The 1864 map above records both the location of the pub and where the old tower stood some 60 years before. It was a large 15th-century fortified gatehouse and part of Alnwick's old town defence walls, serving as a twin-like structure to the surviving Bondgate (Hotspur) Tower.

The only landlord I can find for the Clayport Tower Inn is unsurprisingly a member of the Spours family, a Jane Spours, who appears to have lived there on Clayport Street until her death in 1863. 

The only mention of the inn after that is on the 1864 Town Map above, although this was likely to have been drawn up a year or so before publication, when Jane Spours was still alive and running the inn in her eighties.

John Wood's Plan of the Town & Borough of Alnwick (1827)

The map above confirms that the Spours family were quite well off, and owned sections of the town on the north side of Clayport Street, from the junction with Fenkle Street where the family's butcher shop was, to the junction with Engine Lane in the 1820s (later renamed Dispensary Street). 'Spours' Yard' was at the back of this row, running alongside the yard of the Clayport Tower Inn which fronted onto Clayport Street and many people lived there in the mid-1800s in what would have been quite poor, cramped conditions.

Jane was born in 1779 at Link Hall, nr North Charlton and was the daughter of Andrew & Jane Young who originated from Dumfriesshire, Scotland. By 1804 she was living in Alnwick and married a John Lockey Jr. who worked as a mason. Twenty years later, and widowed for the first time, she remarried Robert Spours, who was a local butcher, his father Thomas being a solicitor in the town. Ten years later Robert died and Jane was widowed once more.

1841 Census Jane Spours 'Ind.'

In 1841 Jane Spours was listed as a widow, living alone on Clayport Street in the Clayport Tower Inn, her occupation listed as 'Ind.' which stands for 'Independent', meaning a person living on their own means or private income rather than working a traditional profession; in her case from money brought in from her various properties in this area of town, which I assume she inherited from her husband's side of the family. The 1855 directory below confirms this by her occupation as 'Proprietor of Houses'.

1851 Census Jane Spours

1855 Whellan's Directory - Jane Spours

Throughout the 1850s Jane ran the inn with the assistance of family members; her granddaughter Martha Forster in 1851 and daughter and son-in-law, Margery and James Forster in 1861.

1858 Post Office Directory - Jane Spours

1861 Census Jane Spours 'Inn Keeper'

Morpeth Herald Saturday,  Mar. 28, 1863

Not long after Jane died in the spring of 1863, her daughter Margery's husband Robert Forster also passed away, so by the time of the 1871 census, she was living with a lodger, William Spours and declared her occupation as 'Mason's Widow'. 

There is no sign of a public house which supports the view that it closed after Jane Spours' death, never to reopen. 

1871 Census Margery Forster (daughter of Jane)