There is a tenuous record of a pub on the site in 1580, but the first definite recorded in Leicester Borough records is in 1688, when James Seeles, or Seets, paid a fee of twelve shillings per annum for the tenement and a damask rose for the adjoining garden.
The damask rose is still traditionally paid today when the rent falls – but the rent is no longer twelve shillings.
Until 1750 the house was called the Red Cow. In one document of 1771, the twelve shillings and one damask rose was payable to the late named Star & Ball, (some records call Bull & Star) now the Crown & Thistle.
This ad from the Leicester Journal of 1778, Alexander Forester of the Crown & Thistle selling Oysters etc,
Still today the Lord Mayor collects the rent of one damask rose and four pennies (maybe that predates the twelve shillings of 1688).
There are three or four listings from 1849-65 that named the pub as the Rose and Thistle. This should be confused with the nearby Crown & Thistle on Townhall Lane which seems to have ceased circa1865.
1814 Thomas Kirk advertised from the Crown & Thistle:
‘Fish daily from London, Oysters by the barrel or score, A commodious room as befits such gentlemen as may chose to eat oysters’
The Burton family kept the pub for over twenty years from circa 1827. William Burton was described by the authorities as a very unsuitable person to run a public house. This was due to his involvement in ‘prize fighting’ which the authorities were trying to stamp out.
Known as the Crown & Thistle even today by old Leicester folks but in 1994, in one of the most insensitive refurbs, Allied Breweries renamed the Crown & Thistle the Fourpence & Firkin, to be in their Firkin pub chain. Fortunately, this ghastly rebranding was not to last long, but what followed was just as bad an’ Irish’ theme pub, O’Neil’s.
By 1996, O’Neil’s it was. The pub was also extended next door in the old Arthur Collin building that stretched around the corner into Guild Hall Lane.
