What happened
At 23 High Street in Falkland, directly across from the palace where Mary, Queen of Scots hunted, stands a crowstepped and pantiled house with a heraldic panel cut with the date 1607. That panel is why the building turns up in arguments about the oldest pub in Scotland, and Anthony Cooke’s history of Scottish drinking is the reason it should not: he notes the date and adds that the house was built as a house, so the drinking came later. The premises have changed name repeatedly — the National Hotel, the Bruce Arms, the Falkland Arms Hotel, the Hunting Lodge Hotel, and latterly the Bruce Inn — which is why a reader chasing the 1607 date finds it attached to four different pubs in the same street. A letting notice of 1905 advertises “these well-known and old established licensed premises known as the Bruce Arms, Hotel”. It is listed category B as the Bruce Arms Inn, reference LB31275. Trading stopped on 1 March 2024.
What is there now
Empty. CAMRA records the pub closed long term from 1 March 2024 with its future uncertain, the premises were advertised to let or for sale with vacant possession until that listing lapsed in June 2026, and the inn’s own web address no longer resolves. The building itself is protected: category B listed as the Bruce Arms Inn, including its garden walls.
Sources
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