The Old Bell Hotel and Restaurant

A prominent feature of the inn is an ashlar fire hood which is believed to be one of the earliest domestic-style ground-floor fireplaces, served by a flue, in England; it is dated to the initial building in 1220. It was restored around 1980. The fireplace is important in the history of architecture in England. In the early Middle Ages fires simply burnt in a central hearth. By about 1200 wall fireplaces with integrated flues built into the structure of the walls began to appear in English castles. The fireplace in the Old Bell uses this flue technology pioneered in castles and may well be one of the earliest surviving examples in England of a flue fireplace outside the context of a castle,…

Scholars consider that the function of the building erected by Abbot Walter in about 1220 was as the guest house. The Historic England official 'listing' of the hotel as a Grade I building, for example, describes the hotel as having been originally the 'Abbey Guest House'. After the Dissolution of the Abbey in 1539 and the departure of the monks the building became an inn offering accommodation to travellers on the road from Bristol to Oxford. The claim that the Old Bell is the oldest hotel in England is based, therefore, on the strong possibility that there was more or less continuous use of the building as a place of hospitality from about 1220 to the present day. In the Middle Ages there…