A plaque to Bombardier Billy Wells and Georges Carpentier, who trained at the Shoeburyness Hotel, was recreated from one photograph and hung in the snug on 3 September.

A plaque recording that two of the most famous heavyweights of the early twentieth century trained at the Shoeburyness Hotel is back on the pub’s wall, recreated from a single photograph of the original, which by one account ended its days in a skip.

The new plaque was installed inside the hotel on Thursday 3 September by The Gains Heritage Foundation, the charity set up by descendants of the Canadian heavyweight Larry Gains, who has his own blue plaque at the same pub. It hangs in the snug, the armchair corner off the bar, and can be seen by anyone in the pub during opening hours.

What it says

The wording follows the original exactly:

Heritage Building. Bombardier Wells and Georges Carpentier, boxers, trained here, early 1900. Borough of Southend-on-Sea.

The only addition is the foundation’s name along the bottom rim, and the colour: the original, judging by the photograph, was a weathered green over bare metal. The new one is blue.

The original Wells and Carpentier plaque, green paint flaking over bare metal, with the same wording as the new one
The only known photograph of the original plaque, which a former boxer recalled hanging behind the bar. Photo: supplied by The Gains Heritage Foundation.

Who they were

William Thomas “Bombardier Billy” Wells (1889 to 1967) was British heavyweight champion from 1911 and the first heavyweight to win a Lonsdale Belt outright. Two generations who never saw him fight still knew his torso: he was the man who struck the gong at the start of Rank Organisation films. Bombardier ale takes its name from him.

Georges Carpentier (1894 to 1975) was France’s greatest boxer, a world light-heavyweight champion who fought Jack Dempsey for the heavyweight title in 1921 in the first fight to take a million-dollar gate.

The evidence for Shoeburyness

The foundation’s chair, Michael Gains, has been careful about what the record supports and what it does not, and Southend Today has seen the material he gathered.

  • The council’s own appraisal. The 2002 Shoebury Garrison Conservation Area Character Appraisal, a Southend-on-Sea Borough Council report, lists among the well-known people connected with the Garrison “George Carpentier, world heavyweight boxing champion and Bombardier Billy Wells who both trained at the Shoebury Hotel in the early 1900s”. That phrase is the council’s broad description of the period rather than a date.
  • Carpentier, 1923. The Sunday Illustrated of 10 June 1923 reported that the French champion had gone into training at Shoeburyness ahead of his fight with Joe Beckett.
  • Wells, 1925. The Daily Mirror of 18 April 1925, previewing a bill at the Royal Albert Hall, reported Wells training hard at Shoeburyness for his bout with Jack Stanley on 30 April. He lost, and it was the last professional fight of his career.
  • Wells, 1910. Wells fought Gunner McMurray at the Garrison Theatre in Shoebury in 1910. There is no evidence that he trained at the hotel for that particular contest.

The hotel was then the Shoeburyness Tavern, the pub built for the trade the Garrison brought to the High Street.

How the plaque came back

Mr Gains first heard of the original plaque in 2024, at the ceremony for his great-grandfather’s blue plaque at the hotel. The boxing writer Colin Hart, who had met Larry Gains several times and who died in 2025, told him there had once been a second plaque inside the building. A former boxer from Southend at the same event recalled it hanging behind the bar, and said that at some point it had been thrown into a skip. The foundation has not been able to confirm when that happened, and passes it on as his recollection.

On 14 June this year Mr Gains and his cousin Paul Simmons went back to the pub to present Billy Smith, who manages the hotel with his partner, with an album from the Larry Gains ceremony. A customer they fell into conversation with produced a photograph of the old plaque, and that photograph became the pattern for the new one. Nobody knows when it was taken, or when the original was put up; the hotel was closed from around 2004 until its refurbishment in 2012, and the foundation will not put a date on either without better evidence.

Mr Smith gave permission for the plaque to go up and, through the foundation, said having it on the wall in the snug would raise awareness again of the boxing history attached to the building.

The Gains connection

Larry Gains (1900 to 1983), born in Toronto, won the British Empire heavyweight title in 1931 and defeated the future world heavyweight champion Max Schmeling in Germany in 1925. Despite his success, the colour bar of the time prevented him from competing for the British heavyweight title. He later settled in England and served in the British Army during the Second World War. The Gains Heritage Foundation is now campaigning for a statue of Larry Gains in Leicester. The foundation is a registered charity, number 1216359.

Corrected 5 September: an earlier version of this section wrongly said the Schmeling fight was an amateur bout and placed the statue campaign in Southend.

See it

The Shoeburyness Hotel is on the High Street in Shoeburyness, by the Garrison’s east gate. The plaque is in the snug and can be seen during normal opening hours.

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