The White Ox Inn

In 1819, Colonel Thomas Talbot located Tilley Hubbard and his family on the future site of the White Ox Inn. Settlement duties required Hubbard to build a dwelling within a year of receiving his property. When London suffered the first of three cholera epidemics in 1832, Hubbard`s house was appropriated as a hospital. Most of its patients were poor immigrants since persons of means were treated in private homes. As many as 25 deaths may have occurred out of a population of 300. The victims were buried in the cemetery on the northwest corner of Dundas and Ridout streets.

In 1838, Samuel Parke bought this property and sold a two-acre lot in 1851 to George Pegler who “built” the White Ox Inn three years later. It is not known whether Pegler’s building was a completely new structure or an expansion of the Hubbard home. Apparently the Inn was named for an ox that had collapsed in front of it. The location of the hotel was ideal, since Hamilton Road was a main thoroughfare into London. Legend has it that British troops from the London garrison stopped here in 1854 on their way to serve in the Crimean War.

In 1868, the hotel was sold to John Wilson, who had previously kept a hotel in the old Orange Hall at 267 Wellington Street. John Pegler (brother of George) operated a pottery business at the rear of the inn, and his son Anthony ran a successful florist business from greenhouses he had built on the property. A street in the neighbourhood is named after the Pegler family.

In 1896, Robert Butterworth and his wife Betsy, who were dentists from England, bought the property. Their son Chris sold it in 1945 to Charles Garnett who ran a restaurant in the old inn. In 1961, the interior was damaged by fire. After standing for over a century and a half, the Inn was demolished in 1982.