BLUES supporters, raise your glasses! Naughton’s Hotel Parkville - where Stephen Kernahan famously belted out ‘Stand By Your Man’ on the Monday after the 1987 Grand Final – is re-establishing itself as the Carlton Football Club’s unofficial social club.

For decades a boozy bastion for university students, politicians and of course Blues devotees, the newly refurbished Naughton’s will reopen early next month in homage to generations of football people (‘Sticks’ included) who frequented the place from the time first drinks were poured way back in 1873.

Though the iconic Royal Parade watering hole on the corner of Morrah Street has operated as a fine dining locale since 2010, joint-owner Ryan Moses said all connected with the hotel were enthusiastic about returning Naughton’s to its former glory.

“We’re hellbent on bringing the pub back. We want to again help create that feeling of welcomeness to all, including Carlton fans,” Moses said.

“The pub has traditionally belonged to many – the locals, the students of Melbourne University and of course the football club people. It’s about again making a space in which all of them feel welcome.”

Since July, the hotel has undergone serious overhaul. Though the dining room is to be retained at the southern end of the premises, a new bar is being installed at the northern end to complement a back bar boasting standing room for 100 revellers and a private room for 30.

“We’re significantly improving the décor throughout in trying to give the pub back its character,” Moses said.

“To reflect the Carlton presence in the bar area, we’ll be gracing the walls with a framed Carlton guernsey, together with football photographs taken by the late Rennie Ellis including the snap of Alex Jesaulenko’s famous mark in the 1970 Grand Final.

“Also going up are the old Weg posters for every Carlton premiership earned and two screens will be installed (one in the back bar, one in the private room), on which every Carlton game will be broadcast live.

“The Club’s theme song will also be played after every win."

Moses envisaged that with the old Carlton ground now earmarked as the hub of AFLW, the hotel “would become home base to those heading to Princes Park before matches and popping back after them”.

Though the back bar is yet to be named, Moses conceded that ‘The Sticks Lounge’ had a certain ring to it.

In 2010, Naughton’s public bar made way for a dining room – and yet with so many notable social institutions disappearing in the years since, Moses and his fellow owners are seeking to buck the trend.

As he said: “Pubs can’t really survive solely as drinking establishments which is why we’ll still be offering food, but the offering should also reflect what those sectors of the community want”.

Naughton’s Parkville Hotel has been recognised as one of Melbourne’s oldest, continuously licensed hotels. Until 2006, only two families had ever owned the pub.

The hotel’s fascinating story was recently documented by Charles Reis, the grandson of JB Naughton, who graciously availed the following details and accompanying images.

Naughton’s was established as the Port Phillip Agricultural Hotel and commenced trading in 1873 at a time when Parkville was still rural in character and is built on the site of Melbourne’s early Hay, Corn and Horse Market. The first application for a licence in 1872 was rejected on account of the proposed hotel’s proximity to Melbourne University, but this was overturned on appeal 12 months later allowing trade to commence. As Parkville’s population grew and the area become increasingly urbanised, a tram line was laid along Royal Parade. It was about this time that the hotel was renamed the Parkville Hotel.

History records that John Bernard Naughton purchased the hotel in 1916, a week after his marriage. His new wife, Mary Elizabeth Hickey, was herself born in an hotel - the Edinburgh Castle in North Melbourne.

Through the 1920s, JB Naughton acquired the adjoining properties in Royal Parade and in 1924 extended the hotel to its present size (with the bottle shop added in 1941). For nearly 20 years covering the period from the depression through to Melbourne’s Olympic Games, JB Naughton also served as a councillor representing the people of Parkville at the City of Melbourne.

JB’s civic involvement became so synonymous with the hotel, that it became locally known as Naughton’s Parkville Hotel, or as recalled by one prominent CEO, simply ‘Johnny Naughton’s Hotel’. The present name was formally adopted for the business by his daughter Nancy and her husband Kevin Reis following JB Naughton’s death in 1963.

Naughton's circa 1960.

The rich history of Naughton’s has been largely shaped by its colourful patrons. Prior to the gentrification of Parkville, customers in the corner bar comprised an eclectic mix of the inner city working class juxtaposed against aspiring university students from Melbourne’s leafier suburbs. Future barristers, surgeons and scoundrels stood shoulder to shoulder with battlers and workers. Legend has it that Sir Robert Menzies, for years the Carlton Football Club’s No.1 ticketholder, enjoyed a quite ale in the corner bar while studying law at Melbourne University.

His Royal Highness, the Duke of Edinburgh, was a patron at Naughton’s Parkville Hotel on a previous visit to Melbourne, while Australia’s first satellite, ‘Australis’, was designed on the back of a beer coaster there.

One of the nation’s most accomplished writers, philosophers and social commentators, Cyril Pearl, requested that the ABC record its television tribute to him at the hotel – and ‘Aunty’ obliged.

Interview with the philosopher Cyril Pearl (pictured on the left), Naughton's Parkville Hotel bar, 1971.

The pub even became the subject of a book penned by Jim Young entitled 'Any Old Eleven' about the Naughton’s Old Boys Cricket Team of the 1980s.

The hotel also has a tenuous connection to a seamier part of Melbourne’s past – the Brownout Murders of the 1940s. At the time, Carltonians and Melburnians alike were gripped with fear as a serial killer preyed on young women in the inner city after dusk. Ultimately, the American soldier Edward Leonski, then stationed at Parkville’s Camp Pell, was identified as a suspect following boastful outbursts whilst being evicted from the hotel for dancing on his hands on the bar. Private Leonski was duly tried, found guilty and hung for three murders.

In the 1970s a series of rolling strikes by bar staff saw virtually every hotel in Melbourne forced to close its doors – except Naughton’s. Nancy Naughton and her husband Kevin Reis were able to continue trading with the help of their nine children (who lived in the residence above the hotel). Even Kevin’s brother, a Catholic Priest, swapped his religious collar for a barman’s apron to help keep the doors open.

The hotel’s structure is still largely original, with its bluestone cellars and a flat roof that commands a panoramic view across Parkville to Royal Park. The corner entrance is consistent with early Victorian hotels, and the general character of Naughton’s is largely unchanged to that of a century ago.

More than a million students have passed through the university since the hotel was built, many of them simultaneously earning a diploma in the school of life from their time in the ladies lounge or saloon bar of Naughton’s Hotel – and just as many football devotees who have saluted the latest victory at JB’s old haunt.

JB Naughton on the right, shaking hands with an unknown Melbourne Town Hall clerk.

To football club people who frequented the famous establishment when Carlton games were staged but a few hefty Geoff Southby torpedoes away on Princes Park, Moses imparted this message:

“Naughton’s is your home pub, somewhere you will feel at home. Hopefully you will experience the spirit of what we’re trying to achieve and gain some enjoyment from that”.