We discovered this article in our archives from 2009 at a time when the Royal Hotel was being auctioned. We thought it might be interesting to revisit excerpts of the article to reflect on the history of the pub which was destroyed by fire for a second time last Thursday night.

Previously reported - Wednesday 16 December 2009

A little bit of history

This Mossman icon's history starts way back in the late 19th Century. In 1892, Jack Mullavey, grandfather of Walter Mullavey of Mossman, sold the Mullavey Hotel at Mowbray to Fred Jensen.

It was on Tresize Road, ½ mile from the Reynolds House, and 1km from Diggers Bridge near the busy Bump Track.

Fred Jensen owned a pub in Port Douglas, so to avoid competing with himself, he wanted the pub moved to Mossman. Jack Mullavey cut off some land on the Front Street side of his farm and Jensen put the pub on that. Two houses were also built there around the same time.

Fred named the pub the Royal Hotel.

It was single storey and raised on stumps about a metre off the ground. There used to be water troughs and hitching rails outside the pubs for the horses. The Royal was the only pub in Mossman that had bat wing doors.

Fred Jensen had a cordial factory behind the pub for many years. It was pulled down in 1990s according to Neville Prentice, the a recent licensee of the Royal.

In Pugh's Almanac, the licensee in 1905 was P.J. Joyce. The Douglas Shire Historical society who kindly supplied this history also has a full list of licensees from 1914.

The Royal was rebuilt in 1932, after the original single storey pub burnt down in 1931, as the two storey hotel it is today. The Royal and Exchange both had large wooden verandahs and external stairs. It would have been built of chamfer board. And upstairs is red cedar.

The Royal surrendered its licence in 2007. It is on the Cairns Regional Council's Register of Cultural Heritage and Valuable Sites, as is the Jensen house next door.

A local legend

Local history says that William Thomson's skull is probably buried in the backyard of the hotel.

After he died in 1886, there was suspicion that he had been murdered by his wife, Ellen Thomson, so his body was exhumed from the Port Douglas cemetery, and his head taken for examination.

Two bullet holes were found which seemed to rule out suicide, and Ellen and John Harrison were hanged in June 1887 for William's murder. She is the only woman ever hanged in Queensland.

Apparently the policeman kept the skull after it was exhumed and used to bring it to the pub and sit it on the bar. After a while he left it there, and finally the publican buried it but we may never know the real truth.