Earliest recording in Wharf Street is from 1829, although Piggott’s directory of 1828 names a Union pub but with no address given.
By 1831, Edward Sansome was licensee and a more apt name for the pub could not be found. Championing the working class, petitioned the then Whig Home Secretary, Lord Melbourne. The letter opened:
‘The artisans and mechanics of Leicester have long endured great privations, owing to the want of employment and lowness of wages which are not adequate to purchase a sufficiency of the common necessities of life.’
It was a long letter covering three to four pages. One of the Home Secretary’s minions replied in flowery terms that he was aware and taking an interest. In other words, it was a waste of Ed Sansome’s effort.
Sansome was undeterred. His alias was ‘The Black Prince’ and the Union would hold meetings for all trades to try to better their conditions, including FWK activists.
In 1834, Sansome petitioned Parliament (Melbourne was now Prime Minister), to try to alter the current law in respect of beerhouse keepers. The reply -if any – was probably much the same as previous.
Sansome would find himself in court on licence infringements on numerous occasions, often verbally jousting with the magistrates. He had several injunctions on his licence.
Once in 1834 an elderly lady complained of Sansome of harboring her husband as she had to fetch him out after 12 o’clock every night. On one occasion such was the noise made by her husband that a constable was called to clear the house.
1836 Edward Sansome was charged by infamous informer Moses Pegg of keeping his house open contrary to the statute, For once Pegg had met is match as Sansome cross examined Pegg continually until outwitting Pegg, so the case was dismissed.
In 1836, his son, Thomas, died aged twenty-one. All this possibly took a toll on his health and in February 1840, Edward Sansome died. The end of his life was quite tragic and all the local papers carried the news. The Leicester Mercury, Herald and Journal all wrote:
Edward Sansome for years a leading man among working classes on both political and trade matters, also an advocate of Liberal principals and polices and well respected for that, the past two years he has been harbouring an afflicting providence and was for a time confined to the Lunatic Asylum, but lately was at home in a childhood state, he breathed his last breath after a short illness.
His wife, Ann, carried on as landlady. The same year Edward died she was fined for allowing gabling in the Union beerhouse by allowing the game ‘penny loo’.
Ann Sansome would continue to run the Union until well into circa 1868. Living at the Union with her sons and daughter, Sarah, together with Sarah’s four children, Ann would still fall foul of the authorities on occasions for breaking licence conditions.
George Collis became licensee in 1868. Ann Sansome would eventually move to live on her own in Clara Street, where she died aged seventy-four. After the Collis’s took over the beerhouse became known as the Rising Sun.
The licence seemed to pass through the Collis family hands from 1868-1900: George to John Collis; John’s wife Mary, and Martha Lawrence, listed as brewer, the sister- in-law.
From 1870, George Harrison, a local maltster who had fingers in many pies, owned the Rising Sun together with quite a few others in Leicester. By 1894, Beeston Brewery were the owners. James Marshall licensee.
Thomas Clay followed c1894. The Rising Sun was up for closure in June 1905.
The ruling read ‘the number of licensed premises in the area is excessive, the licence is not required to supply the wants of the public. Thomas Clay has not contributed anything to the compensation fund and is removable at six months notice therefore £1067.00 to be awarded in compensation £207 of it to Thomas Clay.’
The Rising Sun closed its doors in 30 November 1905.
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