A tun is a large barrel of over 200 gallons.
The Three Tuns was a large commercial inn and posting house dating back to at least the 1720s. In the 1830 Pigot’s Directory the ‘Royal Mail Telegraph’ coach to London (via Saxmundham, Wickham Market, Woodbridge & Ipswich) called every morning at seven o’clock whilst the private ‘Shannon’ called every morning at six. The returning ‘Shannon’ to Halesworth called every evening at half past seven. The ‘Royal Mail Telegraph’ coach to Yarmouth (via Wangford & Lowestoft) called every morning at half past seven.
The inn was in great demand until the coming of the railways in 1859. A local guide book stated ‘a Westleton boy had only to walk to Yoxford to catch the Yarmouth coach at the Three Tuns at 6 o’clock any morning to be in London at the end of a summer’s day’. In the mid-19C, landlady Jane Barnes rented the piece of land opposite from owner of the inn and bowling green Mrs Pike Scrivener of Sibton Abbey and created a garden (now known as Mulberry Park) for the benefit of customers. There were many favourable comments about it in the visitors’ book.
An advertisement in the Ipswich Journal in 1842 described the inn as having ‘a large Assembly room, dining and sitting rooms, commercial room, 2 bars, detached tap room, kitchen and offices, 9 principal and 7 other sleeping rooms (20 beds). Extensive wine, spirit and ale cellars. Stalls for 40 horses, lock up and other coach houses, granaries, out buildings, garden and well frequented bowling green.’
The Assembly Room was used for parties by County families and for meetings of the magistrates and the turnpike trustees. Petty Sessions were held every fourth Wednesday. Auctions of property were often held at the Inn. In the late 19C travel writer, and drama critic of the Daily Telegraph and Morning post Clement Scott was exploring East Anglia by railway. He visited Yoxford and described the Three Tuns as a ‘romantic old world inn ……… with thick white window frames and a blue sign swinging over the hospitable door ……. An inn with stables that could accommodate a squadron of cavalry.’ He went on to describe the garden opposite, with its ‘tall, ivory-white Madonna lilies and branches of magenta phlox and avenues of roses and beds of dear old-fashioned Sweet William, and such an undergrowth of mignonette carpeting the old apple and pear trees, that the combined odours perfume this scented village street’.
In the 20C there was a garage for motor cars and a bus to collect visitors from the nearest railway station, at Darsham. There was at some point a billiards table.
The inn burned down on 22nd January 1925 and was never rebuilt.
The bowling green was taken over by The Griffin Inn next door and the garden by market gardener Sydney Smith at Garden House. Later there was a carpenter’s shop, also Mr Chapman’s garage in one of the coach houses.
In 1976 postmistress Eileen English, local historian, received a letter from an elderly gentleman called H W Whitehead. He explained that he remembered as an 11-year old boy being brought to Yoxford by train one Christmas, to visit his uncle. ‘I remember it very clearly, we travelled from the train to Yoxford by horse-drawn coach as there were no cars then’. The hotel proprietor was Thomas Henry Hubbard, Mr Whitehead’s uncle. He was at the Three Tuns on the 1911 census, aged 66, his 24-year old daughter Rose Ann Spink Hubbard, a single lady, was Assistant Manageress. Mr Whitehead was not aware that his uncle had died in 1924 at Rose Villa in the village, leaving over £1600 to his son in his will, nor that the Three Tuns had burnt down.
A supplement to the East Anglian Daily Times of February 1994 showed a photograph of the inn with firemen trying to put out the blaze. Many readers wrote in with memories of the fire, or information on the hotel from family members. One told the newspaper that in the Daily Telegraph of February 1890 there was an article extolling the virtues of Yoxford as ‘an ideal holiday location with the highlight being its famous old coaching inn with its historic bowling greens’.
Sources
Ian Terry – A Short History of Yoxford 2005 Unicorn Publishing
https://suffolk.camra.org.uk/pub/1857
Charles Delf – Yoxford: A lively Suffolk village with an interesting past. 1971 Yoxford Art Gallery
Notes in Record Office 1970s
photo of firemen posted on facebook in 2019