A history of the Kentish Arms and Queen’s Arms inns has been provided previously. About 10 miles further down the road, at what then was known as Ploughed Ground, stood another inn, the Black Horse. 

The Black Horse Inn was built in 1835 by Edward Gray, its first licensee and proprietor. The buildings still exist as Black Horse Farm, located today near a fast food/service station complex which spans the Hume Highway at Sally’s Corner Road junction.

The inn is described by Shylie Brown in her book ‘Life Behind the Bar: Inns and Hotels in the Southern Highlands’. It was built of sandstone in early Colonial style with 18-inch thick walls, consisting of 13 rooms with a separate cottage of three bedrooms and a large eat-in kitchen, as well as a separate two-bedroom manager’s cottage.

From 1835 the Black Horse Inn was a busy place, well situated on the main road, a convenient place for travellers to stop overnight to rest their horses and have a country meal. It was also, however, at a handy place for bushrangers to harass the small communities, far from police where they could roam freely, hiding in the hills and outcrops. It was unsafe to travel alone, especially at night. If the warnings were ignored travellers could well find themselves robbed of wallet and clothes. In an attempt to stop such attacks, mounted police hid near the inn, selected as the place where trouble was most likely to occur. 

The notorious bushranger Jacky Jacky (William Westwood) escaped from gaol in 1841, bailing up the occupants of the Black Horse and attacking publican Gray. As the pair struggled, a shingler went to Gray's aid, striking the bushranger from behind with his cutter. Jacky Jacky was chained to a cart by Gray and taken into custody at Berrima Gaol, charged with highway robbery and transported to Tasmania.

The infamous John Lynch, alias Dunleavy, bought two bottles of rum at the Black Horse and thereafter went out on a murderous spree, proceeding past Berrima to a farm where he murdered a family of four with his axe. Eventually he was apprehended, sentenced to death and executed in April 1842 at Berrima Gaol. He was aged only 26.

The Royal Mail coach and other public coaches regularly stopped at the Black Horse Inn which was enlarged to a total of 16 bed and sitting rooms, a bar and taproom, laundry, coach house and stables, servants sleeping rooms and small underground cellar, all set on 80-acres of land planted with fruit trees. Edward Gray and his wife Janet went to England in 1847 for a six-year visit, leaving their Black Horse in the hands of lessees including Thomas Ryan who held it for two years until transferring to the Kentish Arms.

The Grays returned in 1853 and in 1856 appointed William Harrison as publican on a 10-year lease. In 1857 Gray advertised the inn ‘with a good tenant’ for sale. From 1863 the licensee was Garrett Kelly who, with his family, was held up in 1865 by bushrangers Ben Hall, John Gilbert and John Dunn. Money and jewellery were stolen. The gang had become daring, holding up travellers along the road in daylight and raiding a number of households and stores, relieving them of food and cash. At one time the gang held up the whole village of Murrimba, marching them all to the village inn. Fed up at being robbed of their possessions, the honest citizens of the entire district were much relieved when notices appeared in newspapers offering a £1,000 reward for the capture of each of the bushrangers. Ben Hall was captured in May 1865.

Joseph Fletcher, the proprietor of the Black Horse Inn in 1865, offered it for sale on 200 acres of land and with the option of a further 600 acres and large homestead opposite. Garrett Kelly, who still held the licence, transferred it to an inn at Marulan in 1868. 

The buildings of the former Black Horse Inn at Ploughed Ground, preserved by subsequent owners, remain as a fine example of our heritage.