Tattersalls Club Hotel, Pittsworth

This is Tattersalls Club Hotel in the main street of the town I grew up in. I took this photo last time I was in town (January 2014). But you would not be able to take this photo today. In the early hours of Thursday morning the pub dramatically burnt to the ground. 

Residents of Pittsworth awoke to the sound of explosions at 2.30 am and the sight of a raging fireball engulfing the pub. Within half an hour the building was gone and a young man was dead. The cause of the inferno has yet to be established, but is likely to be some sort of fault in the building.

The Tatts Hotel, as it was mostly known, was opened in 1903. The name is a very common one for Australian pubs and I think is supposed to indicate that it is an establishment where the gambling fraternity is well catered for (ie named after Tattersalls racehorse auctioneers at Hyde Park Corner in London, who offered rooms for the Jockey Club and attracted a membership of sporting and betting gentlemen).

I think I only ever went in there once. In my youth this place wasn't nearly so nicely presented inside or out, and if I went to the pub, it was to the architecturally uninspiring 'Brick'.

This is what the site of the Tatts Hotel looks like now. My Dad very kindly popped down to photograph it for me. He only lives a few blocks away, but since this task was presumably done in between mowing the croquet club lawn and picking my Mum up from hospital, I appreciate the fact that he took the time.