On this day in Wembury 25th August 1891
"The Perrings Arrive at the Jubilee Inn"??
Western Morning News, 25 August 1891
A small advertisement appeared in the Western Morning News:
“Wanted, General Servant.—Mrs Perring, Jubilee Inn, Wembury.”
The woman placing the advertisement was almost certainly Maria Jane Perring, formerly Maria Jane Collier. She had married Alfred Perring in 1881, bringing together two families closely associated with the Jubilee Inn.
Peter Lugar’s history records that Nicholas Coleman was the inn’s licensee in 1881 and remained there in 1889. By 1893, however, Alfred Perring—described as another son-in-law of Ann Collier—was the licensee.
This advertisement provides an important additional clue. In August 1891, two years before Alfred appears in the known licensing chronology, Mrs Perring was already sufficiently established at the Jubilee Inn to recruit a servant. Alfred and Maria may already have been managing the business, perhaps while its official licence was still held by somebody else, or the transfer may simply have taken place earlier than the surviving records suggest.
The servant they wanted would probably have undertaken almost every kind of domestic work: lighting fires, carrying water, cleaning bedrooms, washing linen, preparing food and helping with the inn’s customers. It would have been a demanding position at the centre of a busy village household.
A Wembury innkeeping family
The advertisement marks the beginning of a remarkably long Perring association with the Jubilee. The 1901 census records twelve members of the Perring family living at the inn. Several generations remained connected with it afterwards.
Alfred and Maria’s son Alfred James Perring eventually became licensee. Following his death in 1940, his sister Lottie Gwendoline Perring took over. With assistance from her widowed sister Annie Horwell and nephew Ian McLaren, Lottie continued running the Jubilee until retiring in 1963.
Reflection
What appeared to be an insignificant one-line advertisement may therefore capture the Perring family at the very beginning of an association with the Jubilee Inn that lasted for more than seventy years.
It also gives Maria Jane a more visible part in the story. Although the licence would later appear in her husband’s name, it was Mrs Perring who was recruiting the staff in 1891—suggesting that she was already closely involved in the practical running of the inn.
The identification of Mrs Perring as Maria Jane is strongly supported by the family and inn chronology, although the advertisement gives no Christian name and therefore does not prove it beyond doubt.
