How many coaching inns are in the Register?

1,847 active entries across England (1,402), Scotland (218), Wales (164) and Ireland (63), each cross-checked against the 1822–1901 stagecoach route gazetteers held by the National Stagecoach Museum.

Do coaching inns pay to be listed or recommended?

No. The Register's standing editorial rule — published on every review since 2014 — is that no venue pays to be listed, recommended or starred. Every inn is visited anonymously by a regional reviewer who pays their own bill.

Can I filter the Register by dog-friendly or open fires?

Yes. The Register supports facet filters for dog-friendly rooms, open fires, food served, gastropub status, county, region and the original coaching road the inn stands on.

How do I submit a coaching inn for editorial review?

Use the 'Submit an inn' link in the page footer or write to editorial@thecoachandhorses.net with the inn name, county and coaching road. Submissions are queued for the next regional reviewer's route; listing is never guaranteed.

Vol. XI · Spring Issue · The Coaching Inn Register

The Coaching Inn Register.
One thousand, eight hundred and forty–seven inns on file.

Britain’s most trusted directory of coaching inns, country pubs and coaching-house stays — every entry cross-checked against the 1822–1901 stagecoach route gazetteers, every review paid for in cash by a regional reviewer who arrives unannounced. No venue pays to be listed, recommended, or starred. Reviewed anonymously since March 2014.

Find your coaching inn Submit an inn for review →

A coaching inn exterior at dusk with warm interior light spilling onto the cobbles — The Bell at Skenfrith, Monmouthshire — a working coaching inn on the old Holyhead Road. Plate from the National Stagecoach Museum archive, Sherborne.

Search the Register by

Seven facets, one working index.

Every entry in the Register is tagged against the same seven facets, so a search returns a short, honest shortlist — not nine thousand near-matches. Pick a facet; we’ll do the cross-referencing.

i.
County & region

1,402 English, 218 Scottish, 164 Welsh and 63 Irish inns, broken down to parish level.
ii.
Coaching road

Indexed against the 1822–1901 stagecoach gazetteers — not postcodes.
iii.
Dog-friendly

Inns that welcome a wet spaniel in the bar and a spaniel-eaten stool at the foot of the bed.
iv.
Open fires

Real hearths, lit most evenings between October and April. We name the inglenook.
v.
Rooms

From four to forty-four. We record bed size, view, and whether the floor slopes.
vi.
Gastropub kitchen

Inns where the cooking is the reason to travel — marked separately from the “decent” kitchens.
vii.
Walking & route

Adjacent footpaths, the next village, the nearest long-distance trail. Filed by our 42 regional reviewers.

See what a full entry looks like →

The Register, by the numbers

A reference, not a startup.

1,847: Active coaching inns on file, cross-checked against the 1822–1901 gazetteers.
3,114: Long-form reviews published since launch, averaging 1,400–2,200 words each.
42: Regional reviewers, every one Pub-Is-the-Hub trained, paying their own bill.
1.4m: UK unique visitors in 2024 — ranked the established reference for the form.

An entry, in full editorial dress

The snug bar of a coaching inn with a roaring open fire and worn wooden settles — Plate 04 — The snug bar, photographed at the second visit.

The Bell at Skenfrith, Monmouthshire.

★ ★ ★ ★ ★ Three stars, half-star reserved

Reviewed by Eleanor Mapp, our Monmouthshire regional reviewer, on the third Friday of February. Two anonymous visits, two cash bills, one overnight in the smallest room.

The Bell is not the prettiest coaching inn on the Holyhead Road. It is, however, the one our reviewer keeps returning to in her head between assignments — the one she sends friends to without first checking whether they have booked a table. It stands on the village green at Skenfrith, three courses of dressed stone set against a Norman motte, and it has been a stagecoach stop since 1632, which is older than most of the buildings pretending to be older than it.

… the ale is Wye Valley, the kitchen turns out a Collop Monday that should be illegal in February, the bedrooms slope because the building is older than the idea of a straight line, and the landlady will tell you, without being asked, which coaching road you are standing on.

Open fires
Dog-friendly
Gastropub kitchen
Seven rooms
On the Holyhead Road

Read the full 1,820-word review Submit an inn to the Register →

Indexed against the gazetteers

The principal coaching roads.

Every inn in the Register is cross-referenced to one of fourteen principal coaching roads, drawn from the 1822–1901 stagecoach gazetteers held at the National Stagecoach Museum in Sherborne. A short selection, in the order a traveller would have met them.

No. 01
The Great North Road

London to Edinburgh, via Stamford, Grantham and York. 412 inns on file.
Browse the route →
No. 02
The Holyhead Road

London to Holyhead, via Towcester, Shrewsbury and Llangollen. 286 inns on file.
Browse the route →
No. 03
The Bath Road

London to Bristol and Bath, via Reading and Calne. 174 inns on file.
Browse the route →
No. 04
The Exeter Road

London to Exeter, via Salisbury and Honiton. 161 inns on file.
Browse the route →

Plus ten further principal roads — the Oxford, the Liverpool, the Manchester, the Carlisle, the Edinburgh (west), the Portsmouth, the Brighton, the Dover, the Cambridge and the Norwich — each filed against the same gazetteer cross-check. Heritage map plates licensed from the National Stagecoach Museum archive.

A kept-honest promise

The bill is paid by the reviewer.

Every coaching inn on this Register has been visited, in person, by one of our 42 regional reviewers. They arrive without warning, they pay for their own bed and their own supper, and they sign their reviews under their own name. No venue pays to be listed, no venue pays to be recommended, and no venue pays for the half-star we withhold when the gravy is over-salted. It is not a model that scales. It is the only model that works.

— James Hadleigh-Cleaver, editor, and the nine staff who put the Register to bed each month.
The Coach & Horses Publishing Ltd., Clerkenwell, since March 2014.

Find your coaching inn Or buy the print companion, The Coaching Inn Almanack →

The Coaching Inn Register. One thousand, eight hundred and forty–seven inns on file.

Seven facets, one working index.

County & region

Coaching road

Dog-friendly

Open fires

Rooms

Gastropub kitchen

Walking & route

A reference, not a startup.

The Bell at Skenfrith, Monmouthshire.

The principal coaching roads.

The Great North Road

The Holyhead Road

The Bath Road

The Exeter Road

The bill is paid by the reviewer.

The Coaching Inn Register.
One thousand, eight hundred and forty–seven inns on file.