This website created by Valerie Martin, contains scenes from her home village of Findon, West Sussex, U.K.

WILLIAM LASSETER'S LAST CHRISTMAS

Copyright Valerie Martin 1999.

I have discovered that William Lasseter operated a gunsmith’s shop in the early 1700s at the property now known as the Gun Inn in the centre of Findon. I can reveal that by 1721, his well-equipped gunsmith’s shop is known to have been furnished with a pair of bellows; two anvils and two vices. Amongst the equipment cluttering his workshop could be found hammers; an unspecified number of files; a quantity of tongs; a collection of boring rods and a significant number of other interesting sundry tools. Safely stored away were four new guns and one fired weapon. In addition, he was also responsible for running the inn and brewhouse with his wife and three daughters, Elizabeth, Anne and Mary.

I think that the Gun Inn in those days was classed as a rather grand alehouse. The owner and his family used the hall as their main room for all activities. For entertaining visitors, there was a choice of two parlours. The two kitchens and seven chamber rooms (two for the family and five for paying guests) indicate that it was a good-sized building. There were a variety of other necessary facilities, including a well-equipped brewhouse; buttery; milkhouse; scullery; workroom and gunsmith’s shop. Ample cellarage was provided beneath the property. A variety of outbuildings, including stabling for travellers' weary horses, were situated to the rear of the inn.

The public rooms were amply furnished for wining and dining and the bedrooms were defined as "comfortable". The Great Chamber or "Solar" provided a substantial bed-sitting room for the household. The furniture of the Great Parlour Chamber embraced a four poster bed; one chest of drawers; a table surrounded by six leather chairs; a mirror and curtains for the windows. The area above the present Lounge Bar of the Gun Inn was probably the Great Parlour Chamber. Indications are that its ample dimensions at this time measured 15ft. wide and some 36ft. in length.

By Christmas 1721, the inn boasted £50 worth of linen. This included seven dozen napkins, (damask, flaxen and huckaback), twelve fine tablecloths and twelve ordinary ones for everyday household use. There were twenty pairs of the finest sheets and fifteen ordinary pairs; and thirty different towels, (of varying qualities to cater for different social classes of guests). In all, a prosperous living was conducted at the Gun Inn enabling it to serve its visiting travellers well.

The brewhouse for preparing the Gun Inn’s own home beer housed, as might be expected, a quantity of beer making paraphernalia; also a cider mill and press.

The commodious cellars with their 500 gallons or so of beer were fully stocked and contained some sixteen kilderkins (or casks) of beer and cider. There were also 240 gallons of wine, consisting of many hogsheads (large barrels and casks), probably containing brandy and rum. Also half hogsheads which contained the same. There were two pipes (wine casks), probably containing port. The contents of William's cellars and brewhouse were altogether given a liberal valuation of £80.

The fact that wine was on the menu of inn confirms that William would have now required a tavern licence. Wine was a pricey commodity and the licence would have been costly to acquire. Travellers wanting to partake in the luxury of wine did not care to mingle with the clamour of the local riff-raff lower down in the social scale. Therefore, the Gun Inn would have provided a separate more intimate room, (maybe on the first floor), where genteel wayfarers of a more refined nature, could quietly retire to quaff their pleasures. This would have been expected from a reputable hostelry such as the Gun Inn.

There was usually a substandard beer available from the "tap at the back" or the "tap room" which was sub-let, most probably also noisy and crowded. This was for providing poorer quality drink for the less fortunate of the community who perhaps knew no better and could afford no better.

The inn’s capacity for holding 4,000 pints of beer and almost 2,000 pints of wine either indicates that Findon suffered with a mighty thirst, or that William probably supplied other outlets in the neighbourhood.

Not surprisingly, some of the goods may well have been contraband. The coastline was a well-known landing point. A notorious smuggling gang flagrantly worked goods up country from West Tarring, as well as many other local villages along the coastline. The cellars at North End in Findon have given storage space for smugglers’ contraband in their time. One dishonoured North Ender, exhilarated with considerable illicit French Brandy, mounted his horse and galloped round in dizzy circles in an adjacent meadow. Finally the infamous gentleman was so exhausted he fell off, broke his neck, and earned his place in history.

By December in 1721, William Lasseter, landowner and holder of the Gun Inn, passed away. William's estate was then valued at over £930. Of this, £600 was "in credits and money owing". This signifies that he obviously flourished in the capacity of a banker and acted as a moneylender to those less fortunate in the village community, (a common enterprise among prosperous innkeepers with a keen eye and a head for business).

William was also a considerable Findon landowner of the surrounding countryside. He bequeathed to Elizabeth, his eldest daughter, twenty-two acres of land and a total of £200. To his second daughter, Anne, he willed twenty-four acres and a sum of £100. He stipulated that the Gun Inn was left to his wife, to be lived in during her lifetime, and upon her death was to be inherited by his younger daughter, Mary.

Five years after Williams death, a plan of Findon was drawn up by the surveyor, Jared Hill — and is the earliest detailed map discovered to date. The map is dated 1726 and is 26 in. to the mile and shows the principle roads still familiar today and indicates the Gun Inn positioned in the Square.

Continue if you would like to read about Visitors to the Gun Inn.