The Landlord who never slept. John Hurstwood Tales of a Legend. Part I.

There’s an old tale that has rattled around our taproom for generations about John Hurstwood, our very first recorded landlord back in 1754.

Now, being a publican isn't known for offering a lie-in at the best of times and you can take it from someone whose family has looked after this place for four generations. However according to local legend, John Hurstwood took things to a whole different level: folk used to whisper that the man hadn’t had a proper night’s shut-eye since the ink dried on his license haha.

Back in the 1750s, this inn sat right on the trans Pennine route between York and Chester. It was long before streetlights or tarmac, and travellers arriving late at night had to brave the high rugged moors in pitch darkness before tackling the River Ryburn. If the rain had set in, the ford became treacherous, and poor souls would stumble out of the water drenched, freezing, and half-blind with exhaustion.

Legend has it that John refused to ever throw the heavy iron bolt on the front door, and he never let the hearth go out. At two in the morning, while the rest of the valley was fast asleep, John would be sitting in the corner with a pipe on the go, a pewter tankard within arm’s reach, and an iron poker in his fist, feeding dry logs into the embers.

Whenever a regular teased him about catching forty winks, John would shake his head, take a slow pull of his ale, and give his standard answer:

"I don't trust a fire to keep itself, and I don't trust the river to warn a traveller."

Whether he ever actually slept in an upstairs bed or just catnapped with his boots resting on the fender, nobody quite knows. But 270 years later, when the wind howls down the valley and the rain lashes against our windows, you can still feel that watchful warmth in the room.

Cheers to John for keeping his fires lit and cheers to Dad for doing the same now xx