The Definitive Guide to the History of
Pubs and Beerhouses in Coventry

Drinking in an Old English Town

Market Hall Tavern, 19-20 Market Place

Alternative Addresses:	Women's Market Place, Market Street
These premises have been known by different names during their history:	FROM	TO	NAME
	1864	1872	Market Hall Tavern
	1864	1872	Market House Tavern
	1864	1872	Market Tavern
	1872	1929	White Rose
A postcard featuring the old Market Tower is a rare view of Market Place, which led through from where Broadgate and Cross Cheaping met to the tower, where you could turn left and take Market Street back to Smithford Street. The Market Tavern / White Rose is on the left and The Lamp Tavern is on the corner of Market Street to the left in the distance where we would find the Arcade Vaults at No.6 and the Market Vaults at No.22. Wilson records this pub as possibly being the Pack Horse, West Orchard, and then the MARKET HALL TAVERN / MARKET HOUSE TAVERN. However, the Pack Horse has now been found to have closed in 1841, after which it became a shop. In 1864 a new license was granted to Isaac Brown for the MARKET HOUSE TAVERN in the Women's Market Place. The pub was, however, more commonly called the MARKET HALL TAVERN, and sometimes simply the MARKET TAVERN - it varied depending on the mood of the newspaper reporter! By 1871 the second licensee, Robert P. Barber, had failed to keep control of behaviour at the tavern, and so, after an official complaint to the justices by a temperance committee, Henry Sanders (described as a "respectable person") was found, to take over the license of the place described such that "no house in Coventry could bear a worse character". The sign appears to have become the WHITE ROSE and the 1874 directory records the licensee as Henry Sanders for that pub. In 1929 the license for the WHITE ROSE was surrendered for the rebuilt CASTLE VAULTS, Market Place. It closed on 30th September, 1929.
LICENSEES: 1864 - 1869 Isaac Brown 1869 - 1871 Robert Potts Barber (moved from the Freehold Tavern) 1871 Henry Sanders (misspelt as Saunders in the 1881 census) 1874 David Sidwell
Street plan of 1851