“Two storey. Very bad appearance and repair. Old building. Right out of business centre,” he wrote.

And he recorded there was a dispute about who actually held the freehold ownership of the establishment.

Five years later the verdict wasn’t much better.

“Takings as low as 15 pounds a week,” this inspector stated.

He had only one word to say about the condition of the furniture at the pub. “Bad.”

The Station House Hotel was quite a substantial two-storey brick building when it was constructed on Peisley street opposite the railway station in 1878.

It was one of several railway-related hotels in Orange that sprung up with the arrival of the railway a year earlier.

However, its best days were behind it by the 1920s when the travelling inspectors made their visits.

The comments were recorded on yellow cards for Tooth’s records.

Those cards, part of the Noel Butlin Archives Collection, have now been made public by the Australian National University.

The inspector’s visit in October 1930 revealed there was tough competition for drinkers in Orange with the nearest pub only 40 metres away and eight pubs within a 400-metre radius of the Station House.

It was one of three hotels on the same block.

The demise of the Station House Hotel came quickly. “Licence surrendered to board. Closed 18.4.31,” a Tooth’s card records.