Nottingham, home to the oldest pub in England

If you visit Nottingham, you have a chance to drink in the oldest pub in England. The snag, if it can be called a snag, will be that three pints in different pubs are necessary to achieve this.

For, you see, there are three pubs in Nottingham claiming to be the oldest pub in England, and all with some justification. They are Ye Olde Trip to Jerusalem, The Salutation and The Bell Inn.

A good place to start is Ye Olde Trip, built into the cliff walls that support Nottingham Castle. This was once the brewhouse for the original castle (knocked down years ago and replaced by a stately home looking building that houses a museum and art gallery) and proudly boasts on its walls “the oldest inn in England”. If asked, they will claim the name dates back to the crusades. In fact, the name is relatively recent as the pub used to be called The Pilgrim. Don’t let that put you off though, because it is a delightful pub with excellent beer. Make sure you visit the upstairs bar where you will see the pub is actually dug into the walls of the cliff; it is like drinking in a cave.

The next stop is The Salutation on Maid Marion Way, definitely not a pub for the faint-hearted, because it is haunted. Apparently, spirits have been spotted by regulars over the years, but what is not recorded is how many spirits of another kind said regulars have to consume first. The most famous ghost is an urchin child called Rosie who hangs around in the caves underneath the pub. If you are lucky, there might be trips to caves while you are there, in which case pop down and have a look. Otherwise, stay up top and sample their ales.

Finally, to Angel Row just off the Old Market Square for The Bell, another pub with caves underneath. Once you couldn’t miss The Bell because it was yellow. The paint job was done in 2004 to make it look like it would have done in the days when it was built. This got a plaudit from one council department for bringing a bit of history back to the city and a telling off from another for not fitting in with the look of the square. Common sense initially prevailed and it stayed yellow, but now it is back to being white. This is an old coaching inn and inside there are small rooms and a large room at the back. It feels like a traditional pub and the beer is always well kept.

But which of the three is the oldest? All three have dates painted on the outside wall. If these are true, Ye Olde Trip wins easily with 1189 – The Salutation can only manage 1240 and The Bell 1437. However, it is one thing to paint a date on a wall, it is another to prove that the date has some validity.

A few years ago, British TV channel Channel Four as part of its History Hunters series ran a competition for the three pubs to find documentary evidence to prove their claims. Ye Olde Trip went from best to worse, as it could only show pub status from 1760, though it could make a claim for the existence of the brewhouse for much earlier. The Salutation managed to prove there was a building on the site as early as 1415 but could only show it was a pub from 1725. Which left The Bell as the winner with 1638. The other two still dispute this.