The History of Our Salusbury
This country inn takes its name from the Salusbury family, major owners of land in this part of the Vale of Clwyd for centuries from the 1330s or earlier. It’s said that Thomas Salusbury was killed in the Wars of the Roses in 1471. His eldest son, also called Thomas, was knighted by King Henry VII in 1497 for helping to suppress a rebellion at Blackheath, London, which stemmed from tax complaints by Cornish tin miners.
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Members of the Salusbury family received many privileges from the Tudor dynasty, but Thomas Salusbury, son of John Salusbury, was executed for treason in 1586 after supporting a plot to replace Queen Elizabeth I with Mary, Queen of Scots. Thomas’ mother was Katheryn of Berain (“Catrin o’r Berain”). She was known as the “mother of Wales” because she married four powerful men and had six children and more than 30 grandchildren, all of whom were in aristocratic families.
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The Salusbury Arms was still advertising its stabling in 1908, when it also had a carriage and horse available for hire. The new landlord, John Bagshaw, also sought to entice visitors, cyclists and anglers, who could obtain fishing licences at the inn. His arrival was a turning point in the inn’s fortunes because he was a retired police inspector with “26 years’ excellent service in the constabulary”.
Previous landlords had been punished for various offences, including contraventions of the Welsh Sunday Closing Act 1881 (which banned the sale of alcohol on Sundays except to genuine travellers). In one such case landlord David Ellis, aged 80, was fined more than £3 in 1907 after a police constable saw the local blacksmith, Thomas Hughes, walk away from the Salusbury Arms on a Sunday with a quarter-gallon (1.14 litre) tin full of newly drawn beer.
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In 1893 Edward Jones, of the Salusbury Arms, had to pay a one-shilling fine and costs of six shillings for allowing two pigs to stray on the “Tremeirchion highway”!