Remember that showdown footy brawl? We take a look at iconic Henley Beach pub’s rich history
EVERY time publican Ben Williams pokes his neck around a corner of the Ramsgate Hotel, he finds a new piece of its history he has not seen before.
EVERY time publican Ben Williams pokes his neck around a corner of the Ramsgate Hotel, he finds a new piece of its history he has not seen before.
“You go upstairs and obviously there are rooms up there where there used to be accommodation, cellars downstairs with old pumps and compressors,” Mr Williams says.
“Everywhere you look, as soon as you start looking for stuff, there is always something new that you find.
“When you look at the hotel from the outside it looks like there are two levels but there are probably actually four.”
According to the State Library, the Ramsgate Hotel opened in 1897 – the second hotel to be built in Henley Beach after the Henley Hotel in 1878.
A copy of The Register newspaper from that year described it as a “magnificent hotel” and “constructed of the best metropolitan bricks”.
Today – 120 years later – the Seaview Rd venue opposite Henley Square is still lauded for its architecture.
“It’s just the iconic beachside venue – it’s a great looking hotel,” said Mr Williams, who is the 48th publican in the hotel’s history.
The first – George Albert Wyld – also owned 18 properties along the Esplanade at Henley Beach. The first of three female publicans at the hotel, Angela Alexander, was in charge from 1904 to 1907.
George Lonsdale was behind the bar the longest, from 1934 to 1944. After his death at the age of 53 in 1944, his wife Pearl Flower Lonsdale took over until 1948.
After a renovation in 1999, the pub took a comical approach topromoting itself, using Max The Merino, the star of the old West Beach Woolshed Function Centre educational stage show, in a series of posters.
In 2002, the Ramsgate was thrust into the limelight as the scene of the now-infamous brawl between Crows and Power players in 2002.
The 15-minute fight outside the hotel happened the day after a Showdown clash, and up to 10 players from both teams were involved.
The fracas – in which two hotel staff were hit while they tried to intervene in the fighting – is now part of footy folklore.
Carr returned to the hotel in 2012 on the 10th anniversary of the fight.
Fifteen years after the bust-up, Mr Williams says it is still “occasionally” mentioned.