Seventeen Stars

In the nineteenth century there were as many as fifteen pubs or beerhouses in what was then quite a notorious little street – Castle Street – and one of them was called the Seventeen Stars. Quite how long it had been there we can’t be sure, but we do know that it was there in 1804, when William Barrett was the licensee. Interestingly enough it was also the year after Ohio joined the United States of America, and the significance of that is that Ohio was the seventeenth state to join Union and thereby brought the number of stars to be incorporated into the American flag to seventeen.

Should the name be older than that it is possible that the name was a reference to one of the larger of the old stellar constellations – Cygnus – a name assigned to the seventeen stars that Greek astronomer Ptolemy said represented a swan flying down the Milky Way.

Licensees

1804 - William Barrett
1823 - J Parsons
1830 - Richard Clatworthy
1844 - Walter Smith
1850 - James Parden