One Fountain Inn or two? In the 1999 revised edition of Hotels and Publicans in South Australia, Bob Hoad asks rhetorically whether a Fountain Inn that he lists as in "Finniss Street, North Adelaide" from September 1851 to early 1853 was "later known as the Fountain Inn, Gilberton"; and, conversely, whether a Fountain Inn listed in Gilberton from March 1853 to early 1862 was "ever licensed as the Fountain Inn, North Adelaide" [1]. The answer is an emphatic 'no' to both questions. The Fountain Inn was, I propose, only ever in what is now Gilberton and never in Finniss Street, North Adelaide. South Australian Government Gazette, 3 June 1852, p.346 The only contemporary reference to the Fountain Inn being in Finniss Street is the officially published record of licenses granted on 3 June 1852 [2] (right). This was, I believe, a simple transcription or typographic error; the South Australian Government Gazette lists the Fountain Inn immediately below the British Tavern which was then and remains still in Finniss Street. It might also have been an equally simple mistake by the Bench of Magistrates whose resolutions at this time were somewhat inconsistent. On 9 June 1851, only days after it had apparently granted a general publican's license to Richard Carlington for the Fountain Inn in Finniss Street, the Magistrates refused an application by the same Richard Carlington for the "Company's Bridge Inn", near the Company's Bridge and not in Finniss Street [3]. And thereafter the Fountain Inn was described only as being in what is now Gilberton. According to Hoad, the first licensee of the Fountain Inn, in Finniss Street, was 'KING, J' [4]. In fact the first licensees or applicants for the public house that became the Fountain Inn were, in chronological order: Richard Carlington for the "Company's Bridge Inn, Company's Bridge", June 1851, license not granted; [5] Joseph Wing - not King - "near the site of the Company's Bridge", 8 September 1851; [6] [The Inn was probably vacant from December 1851 to March 1852 but still technically licensed to Wing; [7]] Richard Carlington, "North Road", now Park Terrace, March 1852 [?]; [8] Richard Carlington, "Finniss Street, North Adelaide", June 1852; [9] George Trenwith, "near the Company's Mill", from March 1853 [10] The old Government Records Office Memorials that summarised early colonial land transactions show that the earliest and only recorded site for what became the Fountain Inn was in Gilberton. On 2 May 1851, a month before the ostensible application for the Fountain Inn on Finniss Street was granted, Joseph Gilbert leased to Richard Carlington, later licensee of the Fountain Inn, about an acre of land in what is now Gilberton [11]. And, on 13 August 1851 Carlington subleased to Joseph Wing, licensee of the Fountain Inn from September to at least December 1851, the same parcel of land, including "Messuage [dwellings] or Tenements and Buildings lately erected and built on the said piece or parcel of land by the said Richard Carlington" [12]. Conversely, there appears to be no records of land transactions in Finniss Street involving any of the key landowners or lessees or tenants or licensees of the Fountain Inn in its first few years. In any case, the Magistrates would not have approved a second public house in Finniss Street. That the Fountain Inn was ever on Finniss Street is, therefore, highly improbable. Certainly there is no evidence for this while there is, I propose, convincing evidence that, from its beginning this Fountain Inn was only located in Gilberton. Notes 1 J L "Bob" Hoad, Hotels and Publicans in South Australia, 1999, p.173 2 South Australian Government Gazette, 3 June 1852, No.25, p.346 3 Adelaide Observer, 14 June 1851 4 Hoad, op cit 5 Adelaide Observer, 14 June 1851; Adelaide Times, 11 June 1851, 14 June 1851 6 South Australian Government Gazette, 18 September 1851, No.42, p.645. Wing was previously the licensee of the Scotch Thistle Inn in Kermode Street, North Adelaide. 7 On 8 December 1851 all of Wing's stock-in-trade, "consisting of wines, spirits, ale and porter, glassware, fixtures, household furniture &c." was sold probably to fund his trip to the Victorian goldfields (South Australian Register, 8 December 1851). Both Wing and Carlington, a professional miner, were at the Mount Alexander goldfields and sent gold to Adelaide with Captain Tolmer's gold escort in March 1852 (South Australian Register, 20 March 1852). There is no evidence of anyone occupying the Fountain Inn after Wing's departure until Carlington was granted a license in March 1852. 8 South Australian Register, 12 March 1852 9 South Australian Government Gazette, 3 June 1852, No.25, p.346 10 South Australian Government Gazette, 17 March 1853, p.182 11 Land Titles Office, GRO Memorial 50/52 1851 12 Land Titles Office, GRO Memorial 163/35 1851 Posted: 10 August 2020. Original content © Craig Hill 2020.