SIR - Your Pub of the Week feature on the Kings Arms, Silsden, mistakenly says that Tetley, a beer sold in the pub, is brewed in Leeds. Tetley’s Brewery in Leeds closed in 2011 and the premises demolished the following year. The cask conditioned version of Tetley Bitter is produced at Banks’s Brewery in Wolverhampton.

The Silsden Local History Group produced an interesting paper based on a biographical manuscript by James Pickard, the man who had the King’s Arms built. The paper collated by David Mason in 2015 records Pickard's financial misadventures while at the pub. ‘I kept my credit by hopping off one twig onto another,’ he said.

James came to Silsden, aged about 16 months old, in 1794 when his parents removed to a farm in the township. Their farmhouse, on North Street, Silsden, also served as The King’s Head beer house. In 1825 James obtained a spirit licence for the King's Head. His plan was to have an inn built on the new turnpike road to Addingham and transfer the licence there.

Work commenced on the King’s Arms Inn around spring 1826. Stone masons commenced building on a plot land in the village. It cost nearly £700 to get the pub ready to open. The deeds described it thus ‘newly erected messuage or dwelling house, the King’s Arms, with stable, brew-house, outhouses and other outbuildings and offices.’

James required a series of loans to keep the business going and he was in constant debt as owner of the King’s Arms. Despite all his problems James managed to remain at his inn for almost 30 years.

M Toft, Windsor Avenue, Silsden