Written by Peter Wilmoth.

IT’S been serving Adelaide’s inner west for 184 years, offering shelter, sustenance, a place to gather and share stories, a place to hold community meetings and, in its earliest days, somewhere to stable the horses overnight.

The Mile End Hotel in Henley Beach Road has been a much-loved icon of the inner west of Adelaide since it was built and opened in 1840, just four years after the city of Adelaide was founded.

Since then it has played a crucial role in Mile End’s earliest years as the township grew around it.

Built on Henley Beach Road, just a few kilometres from Adelaide’s central business district, the hotel sat adjacent to the Hardy Wine Cellars, and next to the Thebarton cattle yards in the vicinity of what is now Junction Lane.

It was originally known as The Market Tavern and over the years has had many names – The Market House, Market Inn, Mile End Inn among them – and many licensees looking after it.

The Mile End Hotel’s story proudly intersects with the development of Adelaide and South Australia. A pub was usually the first business in settlement towns reflecting the need for a community hub, and the Mile End was among the hotels where locals gathered in the early years to discuss their farms, fledgling businesses or their daily lives in this growing township.

It was an era when hotels almost always provided accommodation in upstairs rooms where weary travellers – some likely heading to the gold fields across the border in Victoria in the 1850s and ‘60s – could find a welcoming bed and a meal. This hospitality lasted 150 years, as people were still calling the hotel home until the 1970s.

We will meet one of those later.

Hotels in the 1800s played a crucial role in the development of the Colony, much more than purely pubs. For a time in the mid-1800s they functioned as post offices and were always popular as meeting places as they usually had the only large room in the district.

As J.L. Hoad notes in his 1986 book ‘Hotels and Publicans in South Australia 1836-1984’ hotels also served as places to bring the injured, and official inquests were held there if those injuries proved to be fatal.

Hoad notes hotels also had certain duties including the provision of street lights during the hours of darkness which was often the only lighting available for the guidance of travellers. He notes that publicans with premises facing the ocean were exempt as it could create confusion for ships in the area.

So who ran The Mile End Hotel in those early years?

Its first licensee was William Wilkins, who had arrived in South Australia in 1836 after a voyage on the ship the “Emma”.

Wilkins oversaw an excellent business, and he wasn’t the only publican doing well. It was a boom time for pubs. By the end of 1840 Adelaide had 63 licenced “public houses” for a population of 6,657.

In 1845, having run the pub for five years, Wilkins transferred the licence to William Dumbleton, who had a butcher’s shop in the city.

Many pubs of the time were named after local occupations and trades including wheat growing and milling, timber cutting and brickmaking and bricklaying. A neighbouring hotel, for instance, was The Brickmaker’s Arms, also known as the Bricklayer’s Arms.

Following this style in 1847 the new owner and butcher Dumbleton changed his pub’s name to the Butcher’s Arms Hotel.

The Butcher’s Arms was well named, as butchers frequented the hotel. One of their gatherings – a meeting in 1851 to discuss the price of meat – was reported in the Adelaide Times on 28 February 1851.

Under a headline “The Adelaide Butchers”, the newspaper reported that “a large meeting of butchers took place at the Butcher’s Arms on Wednesday evening last for the purpose of considering the advisability of raising the retail price of meat, in consequence of the present increased value of stock”.

The article noted that a Mr Wear denied “any intention on the part of the trade to impose on the public (saying) the present retail price of meat offered no profit whatsoever to the butcher”.

But, the report continued, “Mr Ayliners, a German butcher, saw some objection to raising the price of meat. He feared opposition and consequent loss of custom.”

In 1870, Charles Blake took charge of the hotel and the name was changed to the Mile End Hotel.

The pub was a central part of settlement life in the latter part of the 1800s, and their numbers continued to increase.

A South Australia Heritage survey noted: “Adelaide has always been called ‘the city of churches’ but it would have been more accurate to call it ‘a city of pubs’, for at one time there seemed to be one on every corner.”

The survey noted that pubs abounded in the settlement towns around Adelaide. Between 1886 and around 1905 there were 128 hotels trading.

About 234 “public houses” in Adelaide were licensed between 1837 and 2005. “Overall there have been over 400 names used for these separate city establishments,” it said.

It’s a testament to the important role hotels played in these communities, and how popular and resilient they proved. Amazingly, the heritage survey noted, of the 75 hotels licensed before 1842, about thirteen of them were still trading in 2005 using the original licence.

But running a hotel has never been an easy task, as The Mile End Hotel’s licensee William Eicke would attest. Eicke ran the hotel in the early 1900s. On 27 September 1906 the Express and Telegraph newspaper reported that Eicke was fined five pounds 15 shillings for “having failed to have all the doors leading to his bar closed on February 11”.

A few months later Eicke found himself in court again and fined “for having supplied liquor to a person not a bona fide traveller or lodger”.

The following year he was the victim of a kind of scam. On 20 August 1907 the Advertiser reported that Henry Maurice Palmer – “a young man”, as close as the court reporter got to knowing his age – faced various charges of having obtained goods under false pretences.

The accused went to various shops in the area saying licensees of local hotels had sent him to pick up goods such as tins of cocoa and that he had been authorised to do so. But no authorisation had been obtained.

The accused called on a shop and asked for a dozen tins of cocoa. The report noted: “He said he had been sent for the goods by Mr Eicke of the Mile End Hotel. He was supplied with cocoa valued at 10/6. William Eicke said he did not give Palmer authority to obtain the goods.

“The accused pleaded guilty and was sentenced to six months imprisonment with hard labour.”

The Nimmo family ran the hotel for some years from 1910 when Maria Nimmo took the licence and offered stabling for horses at the rear.

Paul Williams grew up in Rose Street, just behind the Mile End Hotel. Paul remembers the hotel being known in the 1950s through to the early 1960s as Nimmo’s Mile End Hotel. “There was a sign on the wall – black background, silver lettering – which said ‘Nimmo’s Mile End Hotel’.”

As well as growing up behind the Mile End, Paul has a deep connection to the hotel. As a young boy he sold the local afternoon newspaper The Adelaide News on Saturday afternoons in and around the pub, often to men returned from World War 11 for whom the Mile End Hotel provided a welcoming environment for a drink with mates.

But there was a deeper connection too. Paul’s uncle Jack Shegog lived in an upstairs room at The Mile End for 15 years from the mid-1970s along with three or four other gentlemen who also made the pub their home.

“These were the last remnants of World War 2 servicemen who would frequent the pub,” Paul remembers today. “There were small rooms, single beds, a common bathroom. Jack’s room was at the front overlooking Henley Beach Road.”

Jack, who had served in Darwin in World War 2, drove taxis around Adelaide’s inner west after the war and later worked as a cleaner at the Department of Further Education, cleaning lathes and machines after apprentices had completed their training.

In the ‘50s and ‘60s Mile End was a tough, working-class suburb and workers from the nearby local industries such as tanneries, agricultural machine manufacturers, scrap metal purveyors and the then Southwark Brewery (later known as the West End Brewery) in Thebarton would gather at the Mile End after work.

Adelaide Gaol – which was decommissioned in 1988 – was nearby. Paul remembers his uncle telling stories about “prisoners on release or visiting their brother” who stopped at the Mile End.

“The Mile End was a coming and going point,” he says. Jack was a kindly man who felt for them. “Jack had a very soft heart, he was always giving the odd bob to people who needed it.”

Jack, who also grew up in Rose Street, and his four brothers – all of whom at one stage worked at a nearby furniture factory – would gather regularly at the Mile End Hotel for a beer and a chat.

They were colourful times. Paul remembers Jack telling a story about an incident at the pub. “Jack and his mates came down in the morning and the place had been robbed, the glass door smashed. Their sleep had been enhanced tremendously by their activities the night before. They never heard a thing.”

The Mile End Hotel was a haven for Jack. “Jack had just what he wanted,” remembers Paul. “He had privacy when he wanted it, he had his friends around him, the city was close. He was a cheerful bloke who enjoyed a laugh and living there was a happy time for him.”

Jack died in the early 1990s. A wake was held at the Mile End Hotel. “All his surviving mates were there,” Paul says.

It was the end of an era.

Having grown up in the pub’s shadow, Paul reflects on the Mile End Hotel’s remarkable 184-year history. “It has seen so many aspects of Australian history, from World War 1, The Great Depression, World War 2, the post-war reconstruction and then the boom, as well as the loss of jobs in secondary industries such as manufacturing.

“The pub struggled in the last years of Jack’s tenancy and declined in the 1980s when parts of it were closed and not used. For a time it was just the front bar.

“Then inner-city suburbs became extraordinarily popular and the area rejuvenated. A whole new wave of people moved in and the pub is now extremely popular and a thriving business, and a very hip local.”

In modern times The Mile End has been a favourite for locals, and for those heading to the nearby Adelaide Entertainment Centre or the Thebarton Theatre (the “Thebby”) it has been a place to stop for a pre- or post-show drink.

Today, as we reflect on a pub which has existed through a great majority of the period of European settlement, The Mile End Hotel remains a vibrant part of the community.

Its long and remarkable story will continue for many years.