Half Moon Inn, Quayside

(52.209788, 0.117160)

Half Moon and Quayside

Plot (1) on map. Information from T E Faber, An Intimate History of St Clement’s Parish, 2006.

1279 site probably tenanted by Richard Seman

1500 lease granted by Barnwell priory to John Hedynglay, brewer and burgess of Cambridge

1538 William Browne is tenent  of the ‘king’s tenement’ and pays Barnwell priory 12s p.a.

c.1545. Probably at about the same time as he acquired the lease of Tassell’s garden, Miles Prance had bought the plot at (2) and c.1548 bought the four old chantry cottages nearby and set about building the inn that became the Half Moon on plot (1). This was completed in 1552. Prance was probably already in possession of old 32 Bridge Street. The date of the beam of the entrance yard was 1552.

1580 Miles Prance died and left the Half Moon to his son John.

1595 lease to John Coventry

1604 John Prance leased to Thomas Whiteside, a capital messauge ‘ containing in the dwelling house 3 nether rooms with a buttery leaning to the kitchen and fyve sollars all tiled.’

1614 John Prance bequeathes ‘the Halfe Moone wherein Richard Ashbye now dwelleth’

1618-34 leased to Richard Ashbye

1628 Magdalene College bought Half Moon from Simon Prance.

1635-58 leased to Nicholas Coventyr or his widow

1659 leased to Alice Coventry

1660-62 Richard Allen senior

1663-5 leased to John Allen, waterman. John was the son of Richard Allen I who ran several inns in Cambridge circa 1660.

1667 leased to George Kilby

1672-74 not listed in Victuallers’ Book

1742 Isaac Smith

1744-50 Paradise Smith, widow

1752-c.1785: Nathaniel. later Paradise, Sadler for Half Moon

1763 leased to Deborah Sparkes

1782 leased to Thomas Whittred

c. 1786-1855: listed continuously

1856 not listed