MY thanks go to local historian George Fleming for providing this week’s Bygone.

On the southern fringe of Salisbury, in Tollgate Road, is a very attractive community pub – The Railway Inn – The Dusthole. This year it celebrates its 175th anniversary – having survived changing social habits, pubcos and, latterly, Covid-19!

But why Railway? Why Dusthole? Why two names?

The nearest railway is distant train noises from Petersfinger. Our landlady doesn’t tolerate dust! And it’s odd to have a pub’s local nickname emblazoned on its billboards.

The story? This pub is the last working relic of Salisbury’s first Railway Station and Goods Yard.

In the 1840s, the London and South Western Railway rescued Salisbury from decline, by running a line from Southampton to Salisbury’s nearest location – here, at Milford.

The city was overjoyed. Among those rushing to take advantage was the owner of “a small public house…. situated a short distance from the railway station”. This was rechristened The Railway Inn, in hopes of becoming Salisbury’s Railway Hotel.

Unfortunately, he couldn’t expand! Westwards was then the main Southampton Road. Northwards was the major access road to the goods yard. Elsewhere, were rich men’s houses! So the inn remained in the same triangle of ground for 175 years!

The final blow came when the station burnt down and the LSWR decided to rebuild it on the present site.

The inn now became a working men’s pub, serving railwaymen, coal heavers and cattle drovers from the goods yard. Add the smoke from big steam locomotives and you get the picture – dusty men drowning dust in a dusty pub!

Inevitably it was nicknamed The Dusthole and the name stuck, till no one ever called it anything else.

Finally, in 1976, Gibbs Mew, the brewers, had the two names legally registered and the pub actually appeared in The Guinness Book of Records as the only pub in Britain with two legal names.

 

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