Tommy Wass's

Properly, it should be "The Tommy Wass Hotel" but I've never heard anyone call it that.  Tommy Wass's it is and will continue to be; and Tommy Wass's it always has been, even before it was a pub.  But why?  Regulars should be able to tell you because there is a framed history of the house on the wall, signed W R Thorpe, December 1982.  By kind permission of the management we are able to reproduce the text here.

The Tommy Wass wasn't always a pub;  it was originally a farmhouse, and is named after my great-grandfather Thomas Wass.  Like the sorcerers of old I will conjure up for you some visions of the past, so fill up your glasses and I will tell you the history of the house.

Let us go back to the early 19th century, just after the Napoleonic Wars, one Stephen Wass, a master carpenter and wheelwright, and then a single young man, came down from Easingwold to stay with his uncle William Wass, a linen draper who had come to live in Dewsbury some years earlier.

In 1820 Stephen Wass married Judith Locock, a farmer's daughter.  They settled in Morley where Stephen followed his trade up to his death in 1868.  Of their large family of eight sons (two died very young) and one daughter, Stephen trained his boys to the trade of carpenter and wheelwright, but only one son, John, remained in that trade.  Most of the others became farmers like their forebears.

One of the sons, Thomas Wass, married Rachel Oades-Broadbent, a farmer's daughter from Tingley, in 1852, and they came to a farm in Gipsy Lane, that house having a thatched roof.
Thomas became a prosperous farmer and was well known in the district as Tommy Wass.  By the early 1870s he had moved into this house which was new, and was a substantial farmhouse and he lived here and farmed the land around until his death in 1887; his wife Rachel having died a few years earlier.  After his death he was followed by his son, Asa Wass, who remained here until around 1910.  Asa had a brother also a farmer, who lived here for a time, as did other members of his family.
The land on which this house is built had belonged to the Church Commissioners, and there was covenant in the deeds which forbade the making, storage or sale of any alcoholic liquor.
Inside the house there is a well, which my mother told me was forty feet deep, and on the warmest of summer days gave up icy cold water.  Adjoining the house were stables and cowsheds.  Below this was Woodland House, Beech Cottage and Woodland Cottage, properties all owned by my maternal great-grandfather, Henry Wadsworth.  His daughter married Asa Wass, and was my grandmother.
For a great many years Hunslet St. Peter's Church had a thriving cricket club and a tennis club, who rented a cricket field where Chatswood Avenue now stands, and tennis court adjoining Oakhurst Avenue from Tommy was.  The players were also given the facility of using the house as a changing room, and during intervals the family supplied refreshments.  The place very soon became known as the Refreshment Rooms, and that name stuck for many years.
Asa Wass lived nearby and died in 1924, but a lady called Mrs Iles and her daughter were now resident here, and had converted part of the house into a shop.  In the late 1920's the former Melbourne Brewery Company bought the house and by some means got over the covenant, and converted it into a public house.
A name for the new pub was discussed, and an "old hand" at the Melbourne Brewery said, "Goodness me.  Everybody knows that place as Tommy Wass's.  That's the only name for it."  The Wass family's consent for the use of the name was sought and eventually given.  That is how it came to be known right to the present day as the Tommy Wass.
My family's personal connection ended a great many years ago, and there are no members of the Wass family in this area today, but we do feel a little pride in the fact that the one time farm house with which we once had a long association still carries the family name.  Tommy Wass would be pleased with this.  Let us drink to his memory.  Good health.