The Warren View Hotel, Enmore

 

It was robbery that brought me to this fascinating pub in the inner west of Sydney. 

More specifically it was Robbery Under Arms (the book). And if I’m going to truthful it was more the book’s author, Thomas Alexander Brown –whose nom-de-plume was Rolf Boldrewood – who sparked the trip. 

See, I’m researching our biggest and our more colourful fraudsters, pimps, bludgers, thieves, con-artists, liars and urgers and the pubs of their lives. And Brown - who later added a final ‘e’ because it sounded a tad more aristocratic and befitting of the magistrate whom he became – deserves his spot. If only for one of our great but little-known literary thefts. 

Just briefly (because I’ll be doing a separate yarn on this) in 1894 Boldrewood asked an aspiring young writer, Louise Becke to send him some background info from his years of travels in the south Pacific. Then he asked for more details, for which he paid Becke a pittance and which Becke assumed were to be used to add some authenticating details to Boldrewood’s books. 

But yeah nah. When the book came out over 200 pages - over 80% of the book - had just been straight lifted from Becke’s notes to Boldrewood. Becke was outraged,

wrote to the thief who pretty much gave a shrug of entitlement but inserted a small notice in the SMH and a begrudging acknowledgement in all subsequent editions. 

Anyway the 5 year old Brown came out to this colony with his family in 1831. His father Sylvester was a master mariner with the monopolist East India Company and not long after arriving he obtained a large property on the south side of what the maps showed as the “Main Road to Sydney” (from the south west) just out from Newtown. 

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 Capt Sylvester had architect John Verge design him a house befitting of his status and named it after an estate he’d seen and liked in the West Indies. This in turn had been named after a village back in Somerset and the name was ‘Enmore’.

Brown’s pad was so bloody large that they named the suburb after it, and so Brown and so  Brown(e)/ Boldrewood hadn’t just brought me to Enmore, they brought ‘Enmore’ to Enmore. 

And for me, of course, that meant bringing me to the suburb’s most interesting and historic pub, and that’s how I find myself in “The Wazza” - the Warren View pub - on the corner of Enmore, Stanmore and Edgeware roads in Enmore, 

Sydney Patrick Boland emigrated from Ireland around 1848 to escape the Great Spud Famine when he was in his twenties, worked hard, got hitched to Ellen in St Mary’s Cathedral and got ahead to such an extent that on the 4th of May 1870, the Sydney Morning Herald was able to announce the previous day’s decision of the Licensing Court to grant him a Publican’s license for premises on the corner of Stanmore and Enmore roads to be known as the ‘Warren View Hotel’.

They had five daughters and one son, also ‘Patrick’ who honored being born at the Warren View Hotel by naming his home in leafy Roseville, ‘Warrena’. This second Patrick in turn had five kids, two of whom became priests – the Reverend Fathers Patrick Treacy Boland O.B.E. and Father Hugh Boland. I’ll get back to them in a bit. 

The original Patrick Boland and his wife must’ve had the clues as well as energy as their pub very soon became the preferred location for sessions of the Coroner’s Court’s inquests into local deaths; for political rallies – which usually saw political aspirants addressing a crowd on the street from the pub’s balcony - (especially those of Henry Parkes), and it seems, the passing of fake currency. 

 Pretty soon, (and ever since) the intersection became known to locals as “Boland’s Corner”. The pub’s freehold stayed with the Boland family for over a century but it had a troubled parade of licensees. In the late 1890’s when Ellen Boland attempted to have the license transferred to a woman by the name of Anna Weir it got knocked back after opposition from the cops because, er: “ Anna Weir was a married woman living apart from her husband, against whom she held a judge’s order,’ and was therefore disqualified from holding a publican’s license. 

 Later the same year, Boland again applied to transfer the license, this time to William Thompson and again it was refused. Next year John Walton tried to obtain the license but was only granted permission to carry on a ‘temporary bar’ for three months. Walton must’ve converted it to something permanent because in 1899, publican of the Warren View Hotel, he purchased a ‘fine block of shops at the corner of Enmore and Edgeware roads adjacent to the pub. 

Soon after, he punted the pub to John Blair. Blair carked it two years later and the pub passed to his widow. It then slid through a few hands, gaining a degree of fame in 1905 when the publican was busted by a nark on Christmas Day for shouting the milkman a drink.

Publican was hit for ten bob for shouting the nobbler and the milko had to cough up five bob for downing it. I mean, really? And a merry Christmas to you too, officer. Anyway, William Langton arrived back from time in England and took the reins again in 1911, announcing that all drinks would henceforth be ‘true to label’. Two years later his brother rocked up for a stay at the pub with his niece, one Katie Gold in tow. She’d been a stewardess for the White Star line for ten years and the previous year had jagged a job on fleet’s brand spanking new trans-Atlantic liner for its maiden voyage. The ship was named the Titanic and, well, yeah it didn’t all go according to plan and young Katie was the last female to get into a lifeboat.

Wallabies’ supporters will understand her description of the ship going down and ‘the cries of terror and distress (which) blended and sounded like the shouting at a football match.’ Fortunately the succession of publicans kept the Warren View on a more even keel and it went through a few hands until the pub next hit the newspapers in 1950 when a muftied toff was discovered in one of its upstairs rooms. John May worked at the Australian Glass Manufacturers in Waterloo – the same glassworks that supplied so many drinkers to the early-opening Moore Park View hotel of my schooldays. 

He bunked at the Warren View for a few years but when the genie left his bottle in March 1950 it was discovered that this bloke who kept mostly to himself, was a baron. His father, George Ernest May was an actuary and economist and was made a baronet in 1931 and full baron four years later. The fella who lived upstairs at the Warren View succeeded him as Lord May on his death in 1946. On hearing of her son’s death, his laboring lifestyle and his prior living arrangements, the Dowager Lady May was aghast. “My late husband left all his money to me, which I think is the

most sensible thing to do, because young people are most untrustworthy with large sums of money…..(but) I made (my son) an allowance of £400 sterling a year … (and) he could have more if he had asked for it.” Oh that we all had such gracious mothers. 

Anyway, a few months after the Baron shuffled off this mortal coil, Patrick Jnr, son of Ellen and Patrick Snr celebrated his golden wedding anniversary with a high mass at Chatswood on the other side of Sydney to the Warren View. It was led by one of their priest sons, Rev Father Patrick Treacy Boland O.B.E. who was assisted by his brother and fellow father– (are you keeping up?) – Rev Father Hugh Boland. But it seems that Father Patrick Boland had literally more strings than just liturgy to his bow. As the eldest son of the only son of the founders of the Warren View Hotel, he’d been looked after. When he departed for his eternal meeting with his Boss in 1998, his nephew Heber who was the executor of his will advertised for any claimants upon the priest’s estate including ‘co-owner(ship) of the property known as the Warren View Hotel.’ 

 

Yep, for over 50 years this servant of the Holy Spirit had enjoyed a side hack as a purveyor of less ephemeral spirits – surely another unique claim for this amazing pub.

But the story behind its name - the who, what and why of the Warren - of which this place had a view – is as fascinating as the pub’s own story but I'm going to have to leave that till next time.

Oh, and I’ll also explain just why I reckon the pub should introduce a signature dish of rabbit and oyster gumbo. Cheers.