A History of the North Kapunda Hotel

 Built in 1848 by the North Kapunda Mining Company, the North Kapunda Arms Hotel opened to the public in 1849. The original building was a single-story hotel with a double-storey accommodation wing for miners and travellers on Franklin Street (now Crase Street). The accommodation building still stands today and is the oldest original structure of the building.

John Bickford was the first publican of the North Kapunda Arms Hotel, which was the first licensed hotel in Kapunda. It narrowly beat out James Whittaker at the Sir John Franklin Hotel on Main Street.

The North Kapunda Hotel, as it is known today, is an icon in the town and has featured in many of the town’s notable historic occasions, including the reading of the Riot Act in 1893 by Corporal Mr Hugh Gray Queale during local political upheaval.

This book investigates the building's first 100 years of history, including the many publicans who worked and lived in it and their families, the 1866 reconstruction, the Bachelor’s Hall, Crase’s Assembly Rooms, and the many clubs, foundations, societies, and religious groups that used the hotel as their base of operations.