350 Years Of Drinking At Fossebridge
On the Fosseway, the Roman road that stretches through the Cotswolds to Cirencester, lies an architecturally pleasing public house – The Inn At Fossebridge.
Gloucestershire Archives researchers believe there has been a building on the site since 1634. It was a coaching inn by 1759, and was known as Lord Chedworth’s Arms, after the local landowner, until the 19th century, when it became The Fossebridge Inn.
The pub lies just beyond the small town of Northleach, near the villages of Yanworth and Chedworth, and in the centre of what was a significant Roman centre.
A view of the inn from its garden.
Nowadays, it is – despite the main road – an incredibly peaceful location, helped by its large back garden, featuring a river and lake.
Back in 1812, and referred to as the Chedworth Arms Inn, it was mentioned in local newspapers as the favoured location for local auctions.
Many men combined farming with inn-keeping. John Berry combined the two during his long stay at the Fossebridge Inn, as it had become known by 1871. In this year, 46-year-old John was listed as the pub’s landlord. He was unusual for the area as he was of urban origins, having moved to the area from Westminster, London.
John Berry had married Elizabeth English in 1843 in Westminster, and their children Eliza, Peter, Hannah, Elizabeth and Frank were all born in Chelsea, between 1849 and 1856.
In 1861, they were still in Chelsea, where John was working as a contractor. But later that year, John’s wife Elizabeth died, aged just 32, leaving him to look after their five young children.
John seems to have then made his way up to the Cotswolds, escaping his bad memories of London. In the 1860s, he married Hannah, a native of Lower Guiting, who had also been married before.
In 1871, John and Hannah were still at the pub, living there with John’s “weak-minded” (as the census enumerator described it) son, Frank.
And in 1891, having spent at least 20 years as inn-keeper, John Berry was still landlord of the Fosse Bridge Hotel, as it was known (the town and inn being known variously as Fossebridge, Fosse Bridge and Foss Bridge) and still farming.
His wife Hannah had died in 1881, and he now lived at the inn with his son Frank and daughter Hannah – the latter, a 39-year-old spinster, worked as a barmaid for her father.
A year later, in 1892, John’s “weak-minded” son, Frank Valentine Berry, died, aged 36 – as did daughter Elizabeth.
In 1891, one Giles Brain from Rendcomb was working as a publican and farmer in another Cotswolds village. By 1900, he had taken over the Fosse Bridge Hotel from John Berry, and, in keeping with tradition, continued to let local auctioneers hold their auctions at the inn.
Giles, who was 49, combined working in the pub with his main job as a farmer, just as John Berry had. Giles’ son Ernest was, tellingly, listed in the 1901 census as “farmer’s son” rather than “publican’s son”.
From local men to metropolitan widowers; the Inn at Fossebridge has seen publicans come and go. And as agriculture has declined, the link between the publicans and farming may have died out – but the pub itself carries on.
