The gables were entered by separate stairways as there was no connecting passage from one to the other. There were six bedrooms upstairs which were said to have been poorly lighted, attic windows at each end of the gables providing ingress for the little daylight that could filter through to the interior,” according to a grandson of Stallard’s c.1910. The hotel appeared run-down and dilapidated within 25 years of its construction.

Michael Mulligan got the license in 1863, but failed to attract sufficient custom to the hotel, and appealed to Stallard to release him from his obligations. By c.1869, John Brierly (son of another Fencible) took over the hotel. The trouble was that customers in the northern part of the township preferred the Royal Oak Hotel, while those inthe Lower Settlement stayed away from the Prince Albert in droves. He was fortunate one day in 1871 however when a crowd which had gathered to attend a meeting across the road to choose members for that year’s Highway Board found themselves locked out, according to Mitchell, and so “joyfully surged across the road” at the suggestion of chairman John Bycroft to avail themselves of the bar at the Prince Albert. Around 1876, a Cornishman Richard Tregoning gave it a shot, but soon transferred to James Duncan Dillon in 1878, then to T Hodson in 1879, to John Grogan then to J Field in 1880, then W E Allen by 1881, then Edward Ward Sladder by December that year. By March 1882 the publican had changed again, to