Our Walls
Our walls are adorned with a few figures from different walks of life. Notably above each fireplace hangs our pub’s namesake, Prince Albert, and his wife Queen Victoria. We’ll let you do find the rest.
Prince Albert
Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha (Francis Albert Augustus Charles Emmanuel). Born 26 1819 and died at the early age of 42 on December 14 1861. Albert was born in the Saxon duchy of Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld to a family connected to many of Europe’s ruling monarchs. At the age of twenty, he married his first cousin Victoria; they had nine children.
Although marrying the Queen of England, Albert would never be king as is the tradition, with men who marry Queens, he would be consort to Queen Victoria. Albert was an interesting dude for his time.
Though Initially feeling constrained by his role as consort, which did not afford him power or responsibilities, he gradually developed a reputation for supporting public causes. Including educational reform and the abolition of slavery worldwide, and was entrusted with running the Queen’s household, office, and estates.
He was heavily involved with the organisation of the Great Exhibition of 1851, which was a resounding success. Victoria came to depend more and more on Albert’s support and guidance. He aided the development of Britain’s constitutional monarchy by persuading his wife to be less partisan in her dealings with Parliament The position in which Albert was placed by his marriage, while one of distinction, also offered considerable difficulties; in his own words, “I am very happy and contented; but the difficulty in filling my place with the proper dignity is that I am only the husband, not the master in the house. On 9 December, one of Albert’s doctors, diagnosed him with typhoid fever.
Albert died at 10:50 p.m. on 14 December 1861 in the Blue Room at Windsor Castle, in the presence of the Queen and five of their nine children. The contemporary diagnosis was typhoid, but modern writers have pointed out that Albert’s ongoing stomach pain, leaving him ill for at least two years before his death, may indicate a chronic disease, such as Crohn’s, kidney failure, or abdominal cancer.
The Queen’s grief was overwhelming, and the tepid feelings the public had felt previously for Albert were replaced by sympathy. The widowed Victoria never recovered from Albert’s death; she entered into a deep state of mourning and wore black for the rest of her life.
Queen Victoria
Queen Victoria (Alexandrina Victoria) was born 24 May 1819 and was Queen of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland from 20 June 1837 until her death in 1901. Known as the Victorian era, her reign of 63 years and seven months was longer than any previous British monarch. It was a period of industrial, political, scientific, and military change within the United Kingdom, and was marked by a great expansion of the British Empire. In 1876, Parliament voted to grant her the additional title of Empress of India.
Victoria was the daughter of Prince Edward, Duke of Kent and Strathearn (the fourth son of King George III), and Princess Victoria of Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld. After the deaths of her father and grandfather in 1820, she was raised under close supervision by her mother and her comptroller. She inherited the throne aged just 18! Though a constitutional monarch, privately, Victoria attempted to influence government policy and ministerial appointments; publicly, she became a national icon who was identified with strict standards of personal morality.
Victoria married her first cousin Prince Albert in 1840. After Albert’s death in 1861, Victoria plunged into deep mourning and avoided public appearances. As a result, republicanism in the United Kingdom temporarily gained strength, but in the latter half of her reign, her popularity recovered. Her Golden and Diamond Jubilees were times of public celebration. Victoria died on the Isle of Wight in 1901 at the ripe old age of 81.
Robert James Lee Hawke
“He was one them but he was was one of us”
Robert James Lee Hawke better known as Bob Hawke was Australia’s 23rd Prime Minister, serving from 1983 to 1991. Born in bordertown South Australia, Bobby’s government oversaw and implemented important changes such the establishment of Landcare, Medicare, brokering the Prices and Incomes Accord, creating APEC, floating the Australian dollar, deregulating the financial sector, introducing the Family Assistance Scheme, enacting the Sex Discrimination Act to prevent discrimination in the workplace, declaring “Advance Australia Fair” as the country’s national anthem, initiating superannuation pension schemes for all workers, negotiating a ban on mining in Antarctica and overseeing passage of the Australia Act that removed all remaining jurisdiction by the United Kingdom from Australia.
Apart from all of that, this painting of Bob being struck in the head by a cricket ball during a match between his staff and the press core actually happened. Though being a decent cricketer this attempted hook shot landed our PM at the time in hospital with shards of glass from his spectacles nearly blinded him in his left eye.
Hawke was also a lover of the amber fluid, while a Rhodes scholar at Oxford between 1953 and 1956, he skolled a yard of ale – two-and-a-half pints, or 1.4 litres – in 11 seconds, then a world record.
John Winston Howard
John Winston Howard was born 26 July 1939 and served as the 25th prime minister of Australia. His eleven-year tenure as prime minister is the second-longest in history, behind only Sir Robert Menzies. This immortalised photo was taken while our PM was visiting an earthquake ravaged Pakistan in 2005, Australian military personnel invited the Prime Minister to join in a game of cricket with local children.
What happened next is probably one of the most replayed balls in cricket history. Howard bowled three balls with none making it to the batsman and bouncing several times. In 2015, while speaking at King’s College, Howard explained that it was difficult to bowl.
“They had a ball that was basically the inside of a tennis ball with some white tape around it,’’ he said at the time. “And of course I had a go and it stuck in my hand … and of course it played forever and a day afterwards.”
Howard said it was one of the big regrets of his political career. Howard was born in Sydney and studied law at the University of Sydney. He was a commercial lawyer before entering parliament.
A former federal president of the Young Liberals, he first stood for office at the 1968 New South Wales state election, but lost narrowly. At the 1974 federal election, Howard was elected to the Division of Bennelong, which he would go on to represent until 2007.
John Howard holds the unwanted reputation as only the second sitting Australian Prime Minister to lose re-election in their seat at an election (after Stanley Bruce in 1929). It mattered not however as the Kevin 07 craze swept labor to a resounding victory in The liberal parties election loss. Howard’s actions as prime minister included new gun laws (in response to the Port Arthur massacre), the introduction of a nationwide value-added tax, immigration reform, and industrial relations reform. Australia also contributed troops to the War in Afghanistan and the Iraq War under his government, and led the International Force for East Timor.
Have a read of our Adelaide pub reviews
