The Plough Inn Woburn

 
Garden behind 18 Market Place, the Plough may have occupied part of this site - March 2007

Plough Inn (previously Plough & Wheatsheaf): Back Lane (rear of 18 Market Place), Woburn

This inn is known only from some eighteenth century references. Licensees are mentioned in the register of dues owed to the Vicar of Woburn for premises in the parish. It is also mentioned in some references to billeting in Quarter Sessions |and in the Woburn parish registers.

A deed of 21-22 Sep 1724 refers to five poles of land between ground of William Turner NE and Jeremiah Rowberd SW and on which a messuage called the Plough & Wheatsheaf had stood until burned down in the fire of June 1724. Interestingly Jeremiah Rowberd owned the White Lion until 24-25 Sep 1724; this inn became known as the Greyhound| by 1802. This implies that the Plough, given that the Wheatsheaf was on the site of the modern 20 Market Place, lay behind the modern 18 Market Place (which until the late C19th was part of a middle row of shops which had a lane behind, called Back Lane which was fronted by other properties which are now in the back yards of 14-18 Market Place). This hypothesis is strengthened by Thomas Evans' survey of 1821-2 which puts Robert Taylor (tenant 1801) at this location.

The Plough seems to have changed its name to the Queen's Head in 1735, when Thomas Gurney became licensee, to have closed between about 1736 and 1739, reopened briefly in 1740 then closed for good.

List of Sources Held at Bedfordshire & Luton Archives & Records Service:

- P118/3/1: parochial dues: 1709-1796 [[1710-1740] entry for 1725 notes that it was damaged in the great fire of 1724];
- R6/63/7/24: site of former Plough & Wheatsheaf conveyed by Sir Gilbert Pickering to John Taylor: 1724;
- QSR1727/100: baggage of Queen's Own Dragoons to be conveyed from inn: 20 Nov 1727;
- BPR III: burial of poor stranger who died at inn: 2 Dec 1733;
- BPR III: baptism of Joseph, son of Joseph [surname not given] of inn: 9 Apr 1734;
- R6/63/7/6: devised in will of John Taylor to his son John: 1757;
- R6/63/7/12: messuage formed part of a marriage settlement between Mary Gale and Stephen Taylor: 1787;
- R6/63/7/19: lease by devisees in trust under will of Stephen Taylor to Thomas Cooke, wheelwright: 1794;
- R6/63/7/27: conveyed by Solomon Fountain, devisee of Stephen Taylor to Francis, Duke of Bedford: 1801

List of Licensees: note that this is not a complete list. Italics indicate licensees whose beginning and/or end dates are not known:

1710-1713: John Burgess;
1718-1732: Richard Fisher [burned 1724-1726];
1732-1734: William Whitebread;
1735: Thomas Gurney;
1736-1739: empty;
1740: John Geary