In its early days, the hotel boasted seven bedrooms, three parlours, a large billiard room, bar, taproom, kitchen, stables and other outbuildings all on five acres of land with the frontage extending from Middle Street through to Lagoon Street.

Today, it may seem to be a somewhat unusual location for a public house but that was certainly not the case when it was first built.

The eastern portion of Fitzroy Street was the town’s business centre and travellers to and from places north of Walcha used the Middle Street route rather than going via Derby Street. The wet crossing of the Apsley River in Middle Street was replaced with a road bridge in 1865.

At the Walcha Police Court on February 7, 1863, Richard Case pleaded guilty to a charge of allowing his lamp to go out, for which he was fined one shilling plus four shillings and sixpence court costs. In those days, the licensees of public houses were obliged to “conspicuously display their name and have a lamp containing at least two burners fixed in front of the public house near the main entrance, and to keep the lamp alight from sunset to sunrise throughout the year”.

Richard Case died six days later after suffering a massive stroke while seemingly enjoying good health. His widow Jane Case took over the running of the hotel immediately after her husband’s death, but married Thomas Fitzgerald later in 1863 and had the license transferred to him early in 1864.

By 1866, Fitzgerald’s drinking problem had progressed to such an extent that he was completely incapable of managing the business and as a consequence the hotel closed. It was reopened in September 1869 by John Maule Hill after refurbishment and general repairs had been carried out.

Robert Laurie of Kangaroo Flat at Yarrowitch was the owner and Mrs Eliza Melville the licensee when the hotel closed for good on July 1, 1896. Walcha had tried valiantly to support five hotels from 1882 until 1896 and it seems the small population did remarkably well to keep up the effort for 14 years.

Over the following years, much of the land was sold off and the main building used as a private residence before being converted into a boarding house, which later became known as the Belmont Boarding House.

Agnes Coyne conducted the Belmont for so many years that it was perhaps better known locally as Coyne’s Boarding House. She came to Walcha in 1898 to nurse at the local hospital, married John Coyne in 1907, and had reached her 90^th year when she died at Armidale in 1972.