Person:Joseph Fearn (1)

The Sun Public House: 42 Lake Street, Leighton Buzzard [also Rising Sun] The Sun public house is an old building. It was listed by the former Department of Environment in 1975 as Grade II, of special interest. The building was dated to the 18th century; it is built of a local bond of vitrified headers dressed with red bricks and has an old tiled roof with a gable on right-hand side. The first reference so far found to the site is in 1653 when John Walter surrendered his copyhold cottage in Leck End to Benedict Walter. The cottage was not a public house and one wonders whether any of it survives within the current building, or whether it was pulled down and the public house built on the site.

The first mention of the Sun is in 1720 when Thomas, brother and heir of Leonard Waters was admitted to it and ten acres of land dispersed in the common fields of the town. In 1771 Thomas Waters, probably the grandson of the Thomas of 1720, devised all his real estate to his son Thomas [Z1118/1/10/4]; he died that year and his son was admitted in 1774, presumably when he was of age [Z1118/1/10/5]. In 1788 Thomas Waters surrendered the Sun to John Cox.

In the Northampton Mercury of 19th January 1793 licensee of the Sun, John Hopkins, subscribed to a resolution of Leighton Buzzard publicans banning "seditious and disaffected persons" from their houses. This presumably was in reaction to the events across the Channel in France (four days previously King Louis XVI had been sentenced to death and two days later he went to the guillotine).

The petty sessional minutes for September 1858 record that three publicans in Leighton Buzzard had their licences suspended - Joseph Fearn, once of the Bell and Woolpack, now of the Sun, William Greening of the Cross Keys and Henry Parrott of the Bell and Woolpack. Fearn was charged with harbouring prostitutes and with permitting music, dancing and theatrical performances - a heady mixture indeed.