Places to Stay
B
efore Britain’s railway network spread around the country in the early 1800s, making travel easier for a larger part of the population, coaching inns were the
main type of lodging available to travellers, and travel was mainly on horseback or by stagecoach. The inn was also the focal point of a community: somewhere you could find food, drink and company, as well as accom- modation. Many inns date back hundreds of years: they are full of history themselves as well as witnesses to history in the making around them. Today, Britain’s inns are taking on a whole new life as providers of quality accommodation with a warm welcome; many are now also offering fine dining. The Old Swan, for example, in the village of
Minster Lovell in the Oxfordshire Cotswolds, sits along the River Windrush from the romantic ruins of Minster Lovell Hall, built in the 1430s by William Lovell. The ruins are now under the care of English Heritage, and there is also a medieval dovecote nearby. Recently acquired by the de Savary family, the Old Swan has been given a stylish touch by this family of hoteliers, who are highly experienced at weaving modern comforts into the fabric of a traditional pub. Dating back to the previous century, The
Star at Alfriston in East Sussex was run by the monks of Battle Abbey, offering shelter to pilgrims on their way to the Shrine of St Richard at Chichester. Known as The Star of
90 BRITAIN
Top left: The Star at Alfriston. Left: The Sun at Kirkby Lonsdale. Above: The Hoste Arms in Norfolk. Top right: Hunter’s Hall Inn, Kingscote. Below right: The Pheasant in the Lake District
Bethlehem until at least 1520, the inn had a wooden ‘Sanctuary Post’ that gave fugitives instant church protection: the post can still be seen in the bar today. At the front of the building stands the hotel’s famous red lion figurehead, thought to be from a Dutch Warship which sank in the English Channel, and brought into Alfriston by a gang of well-known local smugglers. Today, you can still enjoy sanctuary with a stay here in the heart of the South Downs. In north Norfolk The Hoste Arms, a
founder member of The Great Inns of Britain, overlooks the green at Burnham Market. It was built in 1550 and was by turns a manor house, a court house, a livestock market, an art gallery and a brothel before becoming an inn in 1651. Owned by the Pitt family (relatives of the political Pitts),
it was called the Pitt Arms, and Britain’s naval hero Admiral Lord Nelson (born in nearby Burnham Thorpe in 1758) is known to have visited every Saturday from 1788 to 1793 to receive his naval dispatches. It became the Hoste Arms in 1811; the Hoste family being landowners in the area. Another Great Inns member, The Pheasant,
is a traditional Cumbrian hostelry with 13 bedrooms near Bassenthwaite Lake in the Northern Lake District. It dates back some 500 years, and was formerly a farmhouse before becoming an inn in 1778. In the 19th century, the famous huntsman John Peel (immortalised in song by John Woodcock Graves, ‘with the coat so grey and the sound of his hounds in the morning’) was a regular – he’d often celebrate and recount his exploits in the tap room, which is now the
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