In March 1830 the newly arrived Digory Sargent Geake bought land east of the site which later became the Convict Gaol where he built a small hotel, known as the Commercial Tavern, described in 1839 as kitchen, bar, cellar, taproom, two parlours and three bedrooms. In 1835 he requested a waiver of the licence fee, which continued to remain unpaid on the grounds that the village of Albany provided so few clients that he could not make a living.

Geake’s health was deteriorating so, in the 1840s, he leased the hotel to John McKenzie and later to John Sinclair. McKenzie took over Geake’s hotel soon after arriving from Newfoundland in the brig ‘Brothers’ at the end of 1840, then in 1843 moved on to open his own hotel, the Ship Inn on the beach at the foot of Spencer Street.

Meanwhile, Thomas Brooker Sherratt had arrived on the ‘James Pattison’ in 1834 along with Patrick Taylor. Sherratt bought several allotments, three on the corner of York Street and Stirling Terrace and another on the corner of Duke and Parade Streets and Stirling Terrace. He then built a two-storey building on the lot on the south-east corner of York Street and Stirling Terrace which served numerous purposes: a home for his large family, offices for various merchant activities and the Sherratt Family Inn. From 1843 Sherratt’s licensee was Hugh McDonald.

There was a fourth hotel, named the Albany in York Street but neither the site nor the name appears to have any connection with the Albany Hotel built fifty years later and still in existence at 244-248 York Street. This earlier hotel was owned by John Craigie who had arrived in Perth and bought land in St George’s Terrace but moved to Albany in 1834. After working in the rural and whaling industries he became the licensee of the Albany Hotel, married Margaret Walker from South Australia at Albany in 1842; three of their children were born at the hotel but in 1846-7 the family moved to South Australia.

Hotel trade in the small waterfront town tended to fluctuate with shipping arrivals and departures while the demand for alcohol was often increased when whalers and sealers were in port. Garden quotes a visitor’s comment that the town in the decade of the forties had four hotels but no bakery. In 1855 John McDonnell moved from Singapore to Albany to establish the Chusan Hotel with the intention of providing better accommodation in the town to supplement the extensive drinking facilities. He erected a large prefabricated wooden building whose height contravened building regulations; permission was granted for the retention of the building if the lower floor was bricked in. Unfavourable conditions meant that this never happened but fortunately the authorities dropped the issue.

The Crimean War had led to the loss of mail contracts with a subsequent decline of shipping so that the hospitality industry remained in the doldrums for a decade or more. The town’s four hotel owners: Thomas Sherratt, John McKenzie, Alexander Moir and John McDonnell, requested a reduction of licence fees to offset the loss of trade but the Governor replied that there were too many hotels despite having already cancelled two licences. The decline continued in the early 1860s when Alex Moir lost his licence and John McDonnell abandoned the industry due to ill health.

There was little change to Albany’s hotel scene until the 1880s when Richard Nesbitt obtained a liquor licence for his Spencer Inn in 1884, having opened this business as a boarding house in 1874. It was delicensed in 1925 and traded as Nesbitt’s Cash Store until 1978. The building was totally renovated and re-licensed by new owners in 1988; it continues to thrive as the Earl of Spencer Historic Inn.

The Impact of Social Change

The completion of the Perth to Albany railway in the 1880s and the Coolgardie-Kalgoorlie gold rushes of the 1990s completely changed local demands for accommodation and hospitality with greatly increased numbers of travellers passing through the port and the town.

The first response to these changes was the building of the Royal George Hotel sited on Stirling Terrace where Alexander and Catherine Moir’s family home, Aberdeen House stood; in the 1880s Frederick Watts leased and added to this building calling it the Railway Hotel as it was close the Great Southern Railway Station. Charles Bailey took over the lease from Alexander Moir in 1892 changing the name to the
Royal George Hotel; by 1897 it is recorded that the hotel had twenty-two bedrooms and five sitting rooms, the licensee then being Edward Reynolds. Massive alterations took place in 1910 with the addition of another storey and a balcony embellished with cast iron lacework facing the street; this was later replaced with a cantilevered verandah roof which has led to structural problems. Now Heritage Listed, the
Royal George remains a thriving business and a popular venue.

By 1890 the burgeoning need for accommodation led to the construction of both the Albany Hotel in York Street and the Freemasons Hotel in Stirling Terrace. The need for superior social facilities rather than just liquor outlets also resulted in the creation of the Albany Club, still thriving at 33 Aberdeen Street.

The Freemasons

Albany’s grandest hotel of all time was the Freemasons, sadly demolished in the 1970s. It began as a single storey building in 1890 extended to two and then in 1912 to three storeys; its embellishments included a vast dining room, 62 bedrooms, 10 bathrooms, gas and electricity including electric. There are many reports of grand functions including mayora hosted for visiting dignitaries in its eighty-year existence.

There was intentions to replace it with a supermarket, but bankruptcy left the vacant lot, which remains a car park.

The response to increasing population and especially to many more travellers arriving in the town continued until well into the twentieth century. The other important hotel built in the last decade of the 19th century was the Premier Hotel still occupying the site on the southeast corner of York and Grey Streets.