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Andrew Swift on
A classic coaching inn
and its postcards
Nowhere is the spirit of the isolated coaching inn
more potent than at “The Crown” at Everleigh, on
the northern flank of Salisbury Plain. It was built in
the early eighteenth century as a dower house for
the Astley family, and was connected to the manor
house by a tunnel which is now blocked part way
along. In 1780, a new road from Bath to London via
Everleigh and Andover – “with fewer hills and quicker
than any other road” – was advertised as being
“complete”.
A 1920s postcard
view of the Crown when it was owned by
Wadworth’s of Devizes.
Three years later, on 18
December 1783, the Bath
Chronicle carried an advertisement
for a post-coach
from Bath to London, via
Devizes, Everleigh,
Andover, Basingstoke,
Staines and Hounslow. The
journey took two days and
cost one pound six shillings
for an inside seat, and fifteen
shillings for a place on
top. Initially, coaches called
at the New Inn (long since
closed), but before long the
need for a more commodious
establishment saw the
old dower house opened as
the Crown. The first reference
to it as an inn comes in
the form of a news item in
the Salisbury & Winchester
Journal for 9 January 1792:
‘Last Tuesday night three
men met at the Crown Inn,
Everley (sic), and for a tri-
barn behind the inn.
fling wager, ate 60 red herrings,
with three half-gallon
loaves, and drank six gallons
of beer.’
There were 300 acres
of land attached to the
A postcard view of the garden at the side of the inn praised
by Cobbett, and where Van Morrison failed to perform.
44 Picture Postcard Monthly July 2010
An early postcard
view of a coach and four drawn up outside
the entrance to the Crown at Everleigh.
A car drawn up outside the Crown at around the time the
comic postcard characters were painted on the wall of a
Crown and early tenants
were farmers as well as
innkeepers. That inveterate
traveller William Cobbett
stayed there in August 1826
and left this description of
it: “This inn is one of the
nicest, and, in summer, one
of the pleasantest, in England;
for I think that my
experience in this way will
justify me in speaking thus
positively. The house is
large, the yard and the stables
good, the landlord a
farmer also, and, therefore,
no cribbing your horses in
hay or straw and yourself in
eggs and cream. The garden,
which adjoins the
south side of the house, is
large, of good shape, has a
terrace on one side, lies on
the slope, consists of welldisposed
clumps of shrubs
and flowers, and of short
grass very neatly kept. In
the lower part of the garden
there are high trees, and,
amongst these, the tuliptree
and the live-oak.
Beyond the garden is a
large clump of lofty
sycamores, and in these a
most populous rookery, in
which, of all things in the
world, I delight. The village,
which contains 301 souls,
lies to the north of the inn,
but adjoining its premises.
All the rest, in every direction,
is bare down or open
arable. I am now sitting at
one of the southern windows
of this inn, looking
across the garden towards
the rookery. It is nearly sunsetting;
the rooks are skimming
and curving over the
tops of the trees; while
under the branches I see a
flock of several hundred
sheep coming nibbling their
way in from the down and
going to their fold”.
It was not only the
social but also the administrative
centre for the area.
Kelly’s Wiltshire Directory
for 1895 noted that “the
bench sits at the Crown
Hotel, Everleigh, on the last
Friday... in each month”.
Towards the end of the
nineteenth century the stables
attached to the inn
achieved fame by training a
Grand National winner.
Nothing in the early
history of the Crown, however
– not even the ingestion
of 60 red herrings – is
as extraordinary as its
recent history. In 2002, the
landlord, Gary Marlow,
booked Van Morrison to
play in front of 1,500 people
in the garden of the inn.
When the singer cancelled
the gig a few weeks before
it was to take place, Mr Marlow
took him to court.
Although he won £40,000 in
damages, he subsequently
announced that the inn was
closing, and in 2004 was
granted permission to convert
it to housing. It seemed
like the final chapter in the
history of the Crown. But
that was before Zimbabwean-born
entrepreneur
Cyril Weinman bought the
building in 2005 to re-open
it as an inn, with a commitment
to making it a focus
for the local community. As
the Crown’s website says, it
has now been “restyled into
a new Rhodesian-based
hotel and village pub, yet
still keeping the traditional
English heritage and history”.
A new chapter in the
history of this venerable old
inn is being written – and
the inn has been saved!
Cobbett would no doubt
have been highly delighted.