The Royalist Hotel

Steeped in history, The Royalist Hotel is thought to be the oldest inn in England, with parts of the building dating back to 947AD. Fully modernised for the 21st Century guest, it is now an intimate and luxurious hotel with 14 individual bedrooms, an award-winning restaurant and its adjacent gastro pub, the Eagle and Child. Whether you are staying in the hotel on business, for a corporate event, a wedding or simply for a weekend in the Cotswolds, let our team of professional and friendly staff cater to your every need.

Located in the beautiful Cotswold town of Stow-on-the-Wold, the very oldest parts of The Royalist Hotel are believed to have been built around 947AD by the Saxon Duke Aethelmar, as a hospice for the ill and destitute. With timbers from the hotel having been carbon dated at over a thousand years old, The Royalist Hotel proudly lays claim to being the oldest inn in England.

Over its thousand-year history, the building has seen many alterations and modernisations to create the luxury hotel accommodation available today, but it still retains many of the original features. These include a medieval ‘witch mark’ etched into the restaurant’s fireplace, placed there to ward off evil spirits, a frieze in one of the bedrooms said to date to the time of the Crusades and two leper holes at the entrance to the hotel.

From the 17th Century the building is said to have spent its time as an inn called the Eagle & Child. This unusual name is said to have derived from the crest of the Earl of Derby, where legend tells of the finding of a child in an eagle’s nest, leading to the depiction of this incident in the crest. Today our adjacent pub, which houses two of our luxury hotel rooms, takes the same name.