Find tools and resources to help you research pubs and hotels in Victoria. Includes information on the history of Victorian liquor licensing laws.
A good place to start looking for information about a pub or hotel is the Library catalogue. Try entering the name of the hotel or pub in the Search box, for example: "Criterion Hotel". (Hint: the inverted commas will search for the name as a phrase, rather than each word individually).
The name of some pubs and hotels can be quite generic, so you may need to add in the name of the suburb to narrow your results down, for example: "Criterion Hotel" Yarrawonga.
There are many other resources that will help you find information on pubs and hotels. You can find some of the most useful ones in the boxes below.
To find information on the licensees of a pub or hotel, see our tab on Publicans.
The Library has a large number of books on the subject of pubs and hotels, many of which are specific to particular localities. Most of these have been researched and published by local historical societies and/or local enthusiasts.
To see if a book has been published about pubs and hotels in your locality of interest, try combining the name of the town or suburb you are looking for with the word pubs or hotels and choosing 'Books' from the drop down menu on the right. For example: Yackandandah pubs, or Prahran pubs.
Here are just a few examples of what you can find:
These are just a few examples but there are many more.
There are also many broader based histories of pubs and hotels in the Library. Examples include:
The following subject searches will help you find more:
Post office, telephone and trade directories can be useful for confirming when and where a pub or hotel was in operation. Most directories are arranged alphabetically by surname or business name, however many historical post office directories include a geographical section, which allows you to search by suburb and street name.
Sands & McDougall directories are a key resource for researchers. Originally known as the Sands & Kenny's directory (1857-59), these directories were indexed and divided into sections by location, name, trade and more.
You can find a list of pubs and hotels in the 'Trade & professional' section of the directories, usually under 'Hotels' or 'Hotels and Public Houses.'
Extract from Sands & McDougall directory, 1930, p. 2020
You can find the complete set of Sands & McDougall directories in the Newspapers and Family History Reading Rooms on level 2A of the Library. The call number is: GMF 98. The Library has also digitised every fifth year of the directories so you can view them online.
The University of Melbourne has digitised every year of the directories from 1857 to 1880.
One thing to note is that Sands & McDougall did not start including rural and regional areas of Victoria until 1902. So if you are looking for a pub or hotel that existed in country Victoria in the 19th century, you will need to try one of our other directories.
A detailed list of regional and municipal directories can be found in the PDF document below:
The information in the indexes below was compiled by well-known brewer Robert K Cole and comes from various sources including post office directories and licensing court records along with newspaper and trade journal notices.
Derived from Robert K Cole's Index of Victorian hotels : manuscript, 1841-1949, the Cole-Tetlow Index was compiled by the State Library's Genealogy Team volunteer Eric Tetlow, and contains over 21,000 names of hotel licencees or owners. In addition to the names of individuals, you may find the location of a hotel and dates when a licence was held.
This index covers the country volumes of Cole's original Index, Index of Victorian hotels : manuscript, 1841-1949, and was compiled by Australian Manuscripts Collection volunteers Dulcie Burns and Sally Hall.
You can search the contents of both of these indexes using the Australiana Index, which is a composite database made up numerous smaller indexes that were created over a long period of time by staff and volunteers at State Library Victoria.
Finding information in the index is easy. Just follow these steps:
1. Go the Library catalogue and enter the name of the hotel you are looking for along with the word cole in the Search box. Eg prince of wales cole. If you get too many results, add the name of the suburb where the hotel was located.
Eg prince of wales cole seymour
2. Select 'Australian Index' from the drop down menu on the right.
3. Click on any title from the search results to view the full index record.
The Local History Index was compiled by staff of the former La Trobe Library. It consists of 34,000 references to Victorian local history, including hotels and pubs.
All entries compiled since December 1993 are available via the Australiana Index
You can find entries pre-1993 on microfiche in the Newspapers & Family History Reading Rooms at call number: LTMF 129.
The index is arranged alphabetically by place, then by reference type, and then alphabetically by name. So to find references to pubs and hotels, look up the suburb or town you are searching for and then look for 'Hotels', and then the name of the hotel.
Eg Maryborough (Vic) - Hotels - Albion
Index card from LaTrobe Local History index
The Australian Architectural Index was copiled by architectural historian, Professor Miles Lewis. It covers tender notices, press reports, published illustrations, architectural drawings and books. Although it is Australia-wide in coverage, the bulk of the content is Victorian. It is strongest for the period about 1840 to 1910, but includes some later material.
The Australian Architectural Index also incorporates the Burchett Index, which is a chronological list of all notices of new buildings and major alterations and additions to buildings in the City of Melbourne for the years 1850-1916.
You can search the index by architect, building type and/or location.
For example, to search the index for hotels in Fitzroy, select Building Type: Hotel and Suburb: Fitzroy, and you will get a list of eleven entries for hotels built in Fitzroy in the 1800s.
It is worth reading the How to use the index section to get an understanding of what is in the index and how best to search it.
You can also find both the Australian Architectural Index and the Burchett Index on microfiche in the Newspapers and Family History Reading Rooms.
Pubs & publicans index, 1840-1854 [microform]
This index was created by Gisborne genealogist Marion Button. Index entries have been taken from the Port Phillip Herald for 1840-1846, and from The Argus for 1847 onwards. The index is in two parts, for surnames of publicans and for hotel names.
You can find it in the Newspapers & Family History Reading Room at call number: GMF 107 / BOX 1
CUB lease agreements between licencees throughout Victoria, 1920-1970 [manuscript].
A leather-bound ring-binder, containing an index of lease agreements between Carlton United Breweries and various drinking establishments in Victoria, hand-written and organised alphabetically.
Acession number: MS 14144
Please phone 8664 7002 to request this item from the Manuscripts Collection. (Note: two business days' notice is required)
Newspapers can be a great source of information on all things to do with pubs and hotels.
The Trove Digitised Newspaper database provides full text access to a range of Victorian newspapers, published between 1803-1954.
Try searching Trove for the name of the pub and hotel you are looking for and the name of suburb or town it was located in (It's amazing how many pubs in Australia went by the same name!) Eg "royal mail hotel" nagambie
(Hint: if you put the name of the hotel in inverted commas the databases will search for it as a phrase).
Excerpt from article: 'Royal Mail Hotel', Weekly Times, 12 June 1897, p 22
This database is useful for finding newspaper articles in the years since 1954 - which is where Trove's coverage generally ends. However, the only Victorian newspaper included is The Age, so it will be better for metropolitan hotels than pubs located in rural and regional areas.
Victorian residents who join the Library can access this newspaper from home.
You can find more information about the Library's newspaper databases in our Newspapers research guides.
If you can't find what you're looking for in our online databases, you may need to explore the physical collections we hold at the Library.
You can try searching our newspaper indexes to see if you can locate an article, or search our huge collection of Victorian newspapers.
See our Newspapers research guides for more.
Search for photos, paintings or illustrations of your pub of interest by entering the name of the hotel in the Search box on the Library catalogue and selecting 'Pictures & photographs' from the dropdown menu on the right.
If the pub you're looking for has a very common name, eg Royal Hotel, add in the name of the suburb to narrow your search. For example: Royal Hotel Portland.
Portland. Royal Hotel. Photo by John T. Collins
You can search for information about historic pubs and hotels in our state's heritage databases.
i-Heritage database
i-Heritage is the City of Melbourne's online database of heritage places. It provides details on individual buildings and contains properties included in conservation studies.
The Victorian Heritage Database provides information on Victoria's most significant places and objects, with images of many sites. Conservation studies can also be found.
Maps can be great for providing context for a hotel's location. Depending on the type of map, you might sometimes also find additional details, such what type of building material a pub was made from (stone, brick, timber etc), the original dimensions of the building, and so on.
Detail from Melbourne and Metropolitan Board of Works detail plan, No. 1008, City of Melbourne
See our guide: Maps for local and family history for more information.
You can find architectural drawings of pubs and hotels in the Library's Pictures collection. Try entering the name of the hotel you are looking for and the word architect* in the Search box on the catalogue. Eg: "doutta galla hotel" architect*
(Hint: The asterisk will search for all variations of the word architect (architects, architecture, architectural etc).
[Doutta Galla Hotel, 399 Racecourse Road Flemington]. Architectural drawing by Harry Lording; H29781
See our guide on Researching buildings and houses for more information.
