Meyrick Arms, formerly Ye Hostelrie
This was the Meyrick Arms. It’s the Meyrick Arms again.
The 1851 census lists this inn as Meyrick Arms, with John Evans as innkeeper. Guidebooks and directories from the same years call it The Hostelrie, so for a while it went by both. Ye Hostelrie came later. We’ve brought back the one that says pub.
Schedule 13
Schedule 13 on the enumerator’s page reads “Meyrick Arms”: John Evans, head of the household, Inn Keeper.
There’s a copy of the page by the bar.
Meyrick, Blore and a Gothick inn
Sir Samuel Rush Meyrick was the great armour collector of his day. He founded the systematic study of arms and armour, reorganised the armour at the Tower of London and at Windsor, and was knighted for it in 1832. Across the valley from here he built Goodrich Court, a castle of his own, to show his collection. Some of it is in the Wallace Collection today.
The village inn was part of the scheme. Around 1830 it was remodelled in its Gothick style for Meyrick, and writers at the time said he “built” it. The design was drawn by Edward Blore, Meyrick’s architect at Goodrich Court and later the architect who finished Buckingham Palace. Blore’s sketch of the inn is in the British Library. A copy hangs in the pub.
Goodrich Court was demolished in 1950. The inn is one of its few survivors, and it still carries chimney pinnacles of the Goodrich Court type. It is Grade II listed. The Meyrick family still owned it when the estate was offered for sale in 1869.
“Sir Samuel Meyrick’s impertinent structure and all the fopperies it contains.”
Not everyone was a fan. Wordsworth wished he could blow it away, though he meant the Court, not the pub.
Why the name
“Hostelrie” was a lovely word and a confusing one. People who didn’t know us thought we were a hostel, or a B&B. Meyrick Arms is a name the inn has carried before.
Locals call it the ’Til, and that doesn’t change either.
What stays the same
Everything else. The pub reopened under new ownership in April 2025, and the people who’ve looked after it since are still here. So are the fires, and the roast on a Sunday.
What it could look like one day
People ask what the old place might look like with its name over the door and some light on the stone. Here’s one idea.
