This week Peeps into the Past looks at two lost landmarks, both pubs, linked by a brutal murder – the Royal Huts Hotel and the Red Lion Inn.
The Royal Huts once stood at the corner of the Hindhead crossroads on the old A3 Portsmouth to London road.
The picture (above) featured is from a postcard postmarked 1906, so the scene is probably much as the area would have looked at the turn of the 19th century – long before the crossroads became a notorious traffic blackspot, prior to the opening of the Hindhead tunnel in 2011.
The Royal Huts Hotel is the long building on the left. At this time it was being run by Ben Chandler, who started the first motor bus service between Hindhead and Farnham.
His name can be made out on the advertisement for livery services on the wall of the adjoining stable block.
The hotel was originally a coaching inn that had apparently been developed from an isolated hut from which bilberries were sold to travellers on what was once a major stagecoach route.
By the time the photograph was taken, Hindhead had become a substantial settlement, popular with celebrities such as Sherlock Holmes creator Sir Arthur Conan Doyle who had a house, Undershaw, built in the village in 1897.
However, for much of its history, the location was notorious for robbers and highwaymen who preyed on the travelling public.
One of the most infamous crimes was the murder of a sailor making his way on foot from London to rejoin his ship at Portsmouth, in 1786.
The seafarer had stopped at the Red Lion Inn at Thursley (pictured bottom right) where he kindly bought drink and food for three men who later repaid his generosity by robbing and brutally murdering him.
Caught trying to sell the sailor’s clothes in Rake, the three killers were tried and executed with their bodies being left to hang in chains on Gibbet Hill near the site of their murderous deed.
A series of five paintings depicting the events surrounding the murder used to hang on the walls of the Royal Huts Hotel for many years before being moved to the King’s Arms and Royal Hotel in Godalming and then being lost until they resurfaced at an auction and were bought for Haslemere Museum.
The heavy chains in which the corpses of the murderers were suspended as a warning to other criminals were also once displayed at the Royal Huts.
They, too, were taken to the Godalming pub and disappeared when it underwent refurbishment.
Sadly, unlike the paintings, they have never been recovered and are feared to have been thrown out after being put in a skip.
As for the Royal Huts Hotel, it became part of the Happy Eater chain of roadside restaurants before being demolished in 2002 and replaced with a block of flats. The Red Lion, too, is no longer in existence, having been converted into two houses.
Do you have any memories or pictures of lost landmarks? They may be houses, shops, pubs, monuments or even trees that have now been lost to communities in the Herald or Post area. Contact [email protected]