The Booth Wood Inn at Cunning Corner, Rishworth: Moorland History and a Dangerous 'Cunning' Bend

Our friend John Oats took this historic pub back to its original name in 2012. It's a bit further up the valley from us at The Old Bridge Inn, climbing high toward the wilder edges of the moors, sits another classic watering hole: The Booth Wood Inn at Rishworth. Other names it has held are: Coach & Horses, Oddfellow's Arms, Cunning Corner (as seen in the picture with this blog), Old Bore. It has also been nicknamed "The Corner Inn". If you ask locals of a 'certain vintage' where it is, half of them will still call it "Cunning Corner." That nickname isn't just local folklore it’s baked right into the building’s 200-year history.

When the Oldham to Ripponden Turnpike opened in 1795, it transformed this stretch of the Pennines from treacherous packhorse tracks into a busy trans-Pennine coaching route. Enterprising folk quickly realised that travellers coming over the bleak, windswept harsh moorland from Lancashire would be desperate for shelter, a warm fire and a stiff drink by the time they reached the Yorkshire side. The inn sprang up in the early 1800s as the Boothwood Inn to offer exactly that.

Over the decades, the pub wore its history on its signboard:

By the 1830s and 1840s, it had become the Coach and Horses, catering directly to the stagecoaches rattling along the turnpike.

By the 1850s, it changed to theOddfellows’ Arms, reflecting the friendly society lodges common among working men of the era, in particular a group who weekly held their meetings there.

By the 1880s, it officially took the name locals had already given it: The Cunning Corner Inn. The road outside curved around a notoriously sharp, tricky bend a "cunning" turn that caught out many a horse-drawn cart and coach coming off the hills in thick hill fog or snow.

After a spell in the early 2000s trading as The Old Bore, things came full circle a little over a decade ago when it returned to its original title: The Booth Wood Inn.

What makes an inn like this worth celebrating today is that same sense of sanctuary it offered two centuries ago. Set against the high backdrop of the Yorkshire moors and Booth Wood Reservoir, it still has that warm, roadside grit: stone-flagged floors, heavy exposed beams, and roaring cast-iron log burners that take the bite out of a Pennine winter. Outside, a split-level terrace looks out over the slopes where sheep graze below the distant rumble of the M62.

Just like centuries past, walkers, drivers coming off the tops, and regulars leaning against the high barrel tables still pile in for a hand-pulled pint, a bowl of something honest, and a dog snoozing happily beside the hearth.

It’s another reminder that long before motorways cut through our hills, these old turnpike coaching inns were the lifeblood of the valley. Next time you're heading up the A672 towards Rishworth, watch that cunning corner—and pull in for a pint.