TROUBLE HOUSE

Trouble House, Tetbury, Gloucestershire

The fickle finger of fate appears to have pointed a bony digit at former proprietors of the Trouble House with an alarming regularity.

the Trouble House has catered to the needs of hungry and thirsty travellers for over 300 years and was once called The Waggon and Horses.

Tetbury carpenter John Reeve built the inn in 1755.

Two years later John Bird took on the lease, and the first hint of tragedy struck when several of his wives died young.

By the 1770s the inn was being leased by Richard Reeve, son of its builder, who hit a sticky financial patch when many of his male customers were forcibly abducted by His Majesty’s press gangs to fight in the American Revolution.

The inn was caught up in the 1830 agricultural riots as local labourers vented their displeasure at the introduction of mechanical haymaking and threshing machines.

One day a wagon was passing through Tetbury, supposedly laden with hay, when someone happened to notice a haymaking machine hidden amongst the stack.

An angry mob gave chase and, having surrounded the wagon outside the Trouble House, set fire to it. Unfortunately the flames spread to the inn’s thatched roof, causing severe damage.

It was subsequently restored and a tiled roof added.

The pub’s financial fortunes then suffered a severe downturn Tradition holds that a landlord who had sunk every last penny into it went bankrupt, and hanged himself from a beam inside the inn.

His successor fared little better and drowned himself in a nearby pond.

By the early 1900s it was well known that the ghosts of the two landlords roamed the premises, and the inn’s stormy past led to its being renamed 'Trouble House.'

Surprisingly, however, there was no shortage of landlords willing to take the risk and tackle whatever malevolent force might be lurking within.

As the 20th century progressed, the fortunes of the Trouble House drifted into calmer times; the ghostly suicides gradually faded away, and are now little more than distant memories.