The White Hart
The 1605 map of Marston by Thomas Langdon of All Souls College, and later with Corpus Christi College, shows a building just where the White Hart now stands today. In fact this is the only building shown. Later, one Nicholas Hore is described as living in a large house, which could well be this building. It is also said that in 1785 there was a group of cottages on the site. Whether these were the old building adapted or new ones in the same place is not clear. Whatever it was, the building was converted into a pub in 1801.
In 1817, one John Parker, with others bought the building called “The White Hart” in conjunction with other pieces of land and buildings. He certainly lived there in 1843, but unfortunately went bankrupt in 1848 and his rights and responsibilities were taken over by others.
In 1851, Thomas Castle was the landlord. He couldn’t have been there long, but was obviously regarded in high esteem in that he was on the vestry committee, an honour only given to the larger landowners generally.
The Evans family ran it for several years later in the century along with a dairy. Moving into the 20th Century, two generations of the Hayle family ran it from 1926 to 1972.
After 200 years serving the village of Marston, the pub is now being converted into two apartments and houses are being built on the land at the back. Despite the security fences, items are still being stolen from the site. I wonder if they had similar problems when they were building the pyramids?
