NEUIGKEITEN VOM CARLTON MITRE

The first mention of the building now accommodating the Carlton Mitre appears to be a transaction recorded in 1665, when a gentleman named James Cragg disposed of the copyhold lease of a cottage and garden near to the ferry place of Andrew Snape. Snape was Sergeant Farrier to the Duke of Albemarle who had largely been responsible for the restoration of Charles II.

Andrew Snape claimed that his descendants for 200 years had served the Crown as farriers. This was evidently borne in mind by the Duke of Albemarle in his capacity of Chief Steward of the Manor of Hampton Court, when in 1665 Andrew Snape was granted permission to build a stable over a ditch opposite the Palace ‘into which all manner of filth is flung'. Soon afterwards, Snape started to build what was later described as a ‘great Inn called the Mytre'. It appears that in its early years, the Mitre was utilised by guests of the royal household who could not be accommodated at Hampton Court Palace. On his deathbed in 1691, Snape bequeathed the Mitre to Andrew Snape, his son who had published the highly regarded folio, The Anatomy of a Horse. After his death, his son, the third Andrew Snape, mortgaged it to William Clarke, the proprietor of the Manor of Molesey.

Passed down through further generations of the Clarke family, the Mitre was eventually bought in 1774 by a David Feltham, the toll keeper of Hampton Court Bridge. David closed it as an inn and converted it to private houses. In 1840, William Feltham, son of David, re-converted the Mitre to an inn and soon became one of the social centres of the village.

In the late 1850's, the Mitre, now owned by the Goodman family, was managed by a Tom Sadler who re-introduced the Mitre as a hotel. It appears that he joined the business just in time for the ‘boom' year of the Great Exhibition in 1851, when thousands of Americans visited Hampton Court Palace. Towards the end of the 1850's, Mr Goodman decided to retire and put the Mitre on the market. Tom Sadler and his wife became the new owners and the Mitre and it soon became renowned as an exclusive out-of-London venue - often frequented by gentlemen who "set great store on a good dinner".

After Tom Sadlers death in 1928, the Mitre was sold at auction for £30,000, the purchaser being a Mr Ernest H. Eldridge. In a Surrey Comet article, Mr Eldridge vowed that the hotel ‘shall retain all those old characteristics for which it has been famous, and its peculiar old world amenities will be every way preserved'.

In the 1960's, the Mitre was bought by Mecca and opened as a Berni Inn - soon becoming famous as the oldest steak bar in the country.

The hotel, again, changed hands over several years and was predominantly used as a restaurant with little use of the bedrooms. In 1991, Coldunell Investments Ltd bought the venue and painstakingly returned it to its original glory, "a 38 bed roomed fine old English hotel".

In 1993, Hotel Management International acquired the tenancy from Coldunell, and the Mitre was renamed the Carlton Mitre.