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Stratford St Mary Swan
Stratford St Mary Swan
Currently closed - may reopen?
Found "closed until further notice" when visited on July 28th 2020.
Lower St, CO7 6JR
grid reference TM 043 341
bar / diner, opened 1520
Plans to extend the pub in 2020 are still in progress but not completed (Feb 2021). The extension will require the relocation of the brewery but once completed will provide views of the garden located to the rear of the premises.
An attractive and lively two bar pub in the village centre. An area to the rear of the lounge bar is used for dining. Pool and other pub games are available in public bar.
The building is part of a historic former coaching inn dating from about 1520. The original medieval structure was at least 3 times larger than what now remains and included a second wing located on the far side of the car-park, which was eventually destroyed by fire.
The inn also once had stabling to the rear of the premises, for about 200 horses…
Facilities
Beer garden or other outside drinking area
Cider (real draught, not keg) available: Hecks
Evening meals
Family friendly
Lunchtime meals (not just snacks)
Parking
Real fire
Restaurant or separate dining area
Separate bar
Traditional pub games available: cribbage, dominoes NO POOL
WiFi available
Gallery
Other nearby Suffolk pubs
Black Horse 0.21 mile
Anchor 0.29 mile
Lion Brasserie 1.65 miles
Carrier's Arms 2.1 miles
Hare & Hounds 2.2 milesHistorical interest
Part of a former coaching inn and posting house.
[...] at the height of the coaching boom it had stabling for two hundred horses. In those days it was a regular stopping place for the Norfolk farmers driving their flocks of turkeys and geese to London's markets. Strange though this method of transportation now seems, Daniel Defoe declared that as many as three hundred droves would sometimes pass the Swan in a single season. It is also possible that Queen Elizabeth visited the inn on one of her three journeys to Ipswich and George II, that most irritable of monarchs certainly spent a night here on 15th January 1736. On another January morning, in 1795, an insignificant youth waited at the Swan for the coach that was to carry him to London…
Landlords
(Most pub, location & historic details collated by Nigel, Tony or Keith - original sources are credited)
(some old PO directory information courtesy of londonpublichouse.com)
(** information from Stuart Ansell)
(*** historic newspaper information from Bob Mitchell)
(**** information from David Pooley)
Old OS map reproduced with the permission of the National Library of Scotland.
