Postcard of the Month: February 2026
/Arun Hotel, Pulborough
This is a rear view of the property which was on the south side of Lower Street. It shows a group of people gathered in the garden, probably the hotel staff and perhaps some of the current guests. There was a stable block to the right of the picture which explains the presence of a horse.
Enclosed with the card was a press cutting, repeated in the Argus in 1996, about a fire which occurred in the hotel. The original report in 1896 describes how the occupants, including Mrs. Cooper the landlady and her three children, were rescued by neighbours. One of them, Mr Burnett, then cycled to Petworth to summon the (horse drawn) fire brigade which appeared at 3am, an hour or so after he had set out. Sadly, one of their horses died shortly afterwards, possibly from the extreme exertion. The horse was, however, the only fatality of the whole incident.
The photographer and publisher of the card, is identified on the back as S.M. Gibson & Co. of Gateshead, and clearly not a local supplier. Research in the relevant press records for that town revealed them to own some ninety cameras nationwide, together with the attendant staff, in the first decade of the 1900s, until the business folded on the outbreak of WW1. Their subjects included many hotels and hostelries, and the cards would no doubt have been used by these as promotional material. The company was established by Stephen Maddison Gibson at Saltwell Road in Gateshead, and he was something of a pioneer in this type of operation. Other branches were opened in Bristol, Dublin, Liverpool and Newcastle but according to an account by his daughter, the cameras were called in for security reasons when the war started in 1914, and the business folded soon afterwards.
The Arun Hotel was rebuilt following the fire, and no obvious signs remain on this postcard which dates from around 1910 during the period of the Gibson business. The hotel was closed in 1999, and the building converted into a number of town houses. These are shown in a photograph on page 61 of ‘Around Pulborough’ by P.A.L. Vine, published in 2002.