The Coaching Inn Index — Issue No. XI
Britain’s most trusted directory of coaching inns, country pubs and coaching‑house stays.
An independent, editorially‑curated register of 1,847 working coaching inns across England, Scotland, Wales and Ireland — each visited anonymously, each cross‑checked against the 1822–1901 stagecoach route gazetteers.
No venue pays to be listed, recommended or starred. No third‑party ad‑tech cookies. Ever.
A note from the editor
The kept‑honest promise, restated.
Every inn in this Register is paid for by its reviewer. The bill is settled in cash, the bedroom booked under a travelling name, and the meal ordered from the carte. No venue knows it is being considered, and no venue has ever paid — nor been asked to pay — for inclusion, recommendation or star.
The Register was founded in March 2014 by James Hadleigh‑Cleaver, a former AA Pub Guide editor, and is published by The Coach & Horses Publishing Ltd. from a small yard in Clerkenwell. It is backed by the Coaching Inn Heritage Trust, an industry body representing more than 340 independent innkeepers; it is recommended by VisitBritain, VisitScotland, Tourism Ireland and eleven of the fourteen UK regional tourist boards; and it carries the 2023 TravMedia Award for Best Travel Publication.
The site is rebuilt on a self‑hosted stack with no third‑party tracking. There are no ad‑tech cookies set when you read a review. There is no ‘sponsored’ column and no commission on bookings referred through the index — though innkeepers do, graciously, send a postcard.
— The Editor, Spring issue
In the Register this issue
Three coaching inns we have slept in this season.
A standing selection, chosen by the regional reviewers and reissued with the Spring register. Each has been visited, paid for and written up at length.
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Cumbria · on the Penrith–Carlisle road
The George & Dragon, Penrith
A stone‑flagged coaching house that has been welcoming travellers off the Great North Road since 1724. The snug still smells of pipe tobacco and brown ale.
Read the review →
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Powys · on the Aberystwyth road
The Talbot, Tregaron
An eighteenth‑century posting house on the old Aberystwyth turnpike, kept these past thirty years by the same family. The bara brith at breakfast is, frankly, worth the drive alone.
Read the review →
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Scottish Borders · on the Edinburgh–Carlisle road
The Cross Keys, Selkirk
A small coaching inn with seven letting bedrooms, a copper‑topped bar and the kind of mixed grill that made the Borders coach drivers stop here twice a week, every week, for two hundred years.
Read the review →
The Coaching Roads
Four turnpikes that built the index.
The Register is plotted, inn by inn, along the four great stagecoach routes recorded in the 1822–1901 gazetteers. Each road is a chapter; each chapter, a route of inns.
No. I
London to Bath
The old Great West Road, with its posting houses at Maidenhead, Hungerford and the Bear at Devizes.
No. II
London to Exeter
The southern road to the West Country, with the long pull over Salisbury Plain and the descent to the Exe.
No. III
London to Holyhead
The mail road to Ireland, with its overnight staging inns at Shrewsbury and Llangollen, and the wild run over Snowdon’s shoulder.
No. IV
The Great North Road
Birmingham, Doncaster, Wetherby, Newcastle — the long haul north, still lined at every stage with an inn that remembers the mails.
The Register, by region
Contents of the current issue.
The Register is kept in four regional volumes. Each is a separate sub‑index with full reviews, route maps and reader letters.
- I England The largest of the four volumes, with seventeen regional sub‑indexes from Cornwall to Northumberland. 1,402inns
- II Scotland From the Border inns of Selkirk to the staging houses of Inverness and the old inns of Perthshire. 218inns
- III Wales The Welsh volume of the Register, plotted largely along the old London–Holyhead road and its branch turnpikes. 164inns
- IV Ireland The newest volume of the Register, opened in 2019, with a particular lean toward the old mail‑coach houses of Leinster and Munster. 63inns
Trusted by the regional press since 2015
Featured in.
- The Telegraph Travel Long‑read feature, March 2024
- The Sunday Times Listed in the ‘Best of British’ travel column
- Country Life Cover story on coaching‑house heritage, 2023
- BBC Countryfile Magazine Recommended walking‑holiday guide, Autumn 2024
Best Travel Publication — TravMedia Awards, 2023
Shortlisted, Independent Publisher of the Year — BSME Awards, 2024