Pint Passport

3 pubs checked · updated 18 September 2026

The oldest pub in West Yorkshire

The short answer

Oldest claim

The Bingley Arms

Says AD 953. The first record is 1738.

Grade C · Tradition

By claim, the oldest pub in West Yorkshire is the Bingley Arms at Bardsey, which advertises AD 953 and carries a datestone of 1738. Historic England's listing and its 2022 review of oldest-pub claims describe a mid-eighteenth-century building consistent with that datestone, find no evidence for a tenth- or eleventh-century inn, and point out that no pubs are mentioned anywhere in Domesday Book. The oldest tested fabric in the county is elsewhere: a sixteenth-century cruck truss inside the Old Bridge Inn at Ripponden.

West Yorkshire is where the oldest-pub argument has been conducted most publicly in England, because the county's famous claimant has been examined in print by the national heritage body and by an independent buildings archaeologist, and neither found what the sign promises. That makes this a short list with an unusually clear evidential shape. The Pennine pattern is also worth understanding: gritstone inns with sober eighteenth-century frontages that conceal much older timber structures behind, because prosperous clothier-farmers refaced their houses in stone rather than rebuilding them. The Old Bridge Inn at Ripponden is precisely that — an eighteenth-century face over a sixteenth-century cruck frame and seventeenth-century panelling — and it stands beside a packhorse bridge, which is a reminder that the valleys here were trade routes long before the mills arrived. The county's dates run centuries earlier than its documents, and here the documents are good enough to prove it. Three pubs is a short list for a county of this size, and it will grow as the evidence does.

What the listings found

The Bingley Arms stands beside an Anglo-Saxon church in a village with genuine early history, and that proximity is almost certainly where its date came from. Historic England’s 2022 article on oldest-pub claims deals with it directly, alongside Ye Olde Fighting Cocks and Ye Olde Trip to Jerusalem, and the buildings archaeologist James Wright reached the same conclusion independently. None of that makes it a poor pub — the fireplaces, the Dutch oven and the chimney hiding places are all worth seeing — but 1738 is a building date, not a licence, and 953 is not a date at all.

The valley inns

The Old Bridge Inn at Ripponden is the county’s most rewarding building for anyone interested in how these places were made: upper and lower bars, a cruck frame overhead, an octagonal font found during excavation kept inside, and a sixteenth-century packhorse bridge over the Ryburn a few steps from the door. The Chequers at Ledsham is the quietest of the three and the least documented. For the national argument see the oldest pubs in England and the oldest pubs in the UK; for how a cruck truss dates a building, see how historians date an old pub.

Map of 3 old pubs in West Yorkshire

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West Yorkshire

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The contenders, oldest claim first

Order the contenders

  1. The Bingley Arms

    Grade C

    Bardsey, West Yorkshire

    Historic England's listing and its 2022 'oldest pub' blog find a mid-18th-century building with a 1738 datestone and no evidence for a 10th- or 11th-century inn; no pubs appear in Domesday. The 953 date is unsourced tradition. 1738 is a building date, not a documented licence.

    Claims AD 953; first recorded 1738; building c.1738.

  2. The Old Bridge Inn

    Grade B

    Ripponden, West Yorkshire

    The pub cites a 1307 record of the site's yeoman-clothier owners. Historic England lists the first recorded landlord as John Hurstwood in 1754, with a 16th-century cruck truss and 17th-century panelling inside, so the fabric is old but pub use is only documented from the 18th century. A commercial directory confirms it independently: Edward Baines's directory of the county of York (1822) lists John Schofield as

    Claims 1307; first recorded 1754.

  3. The Chequers Inn

    Grade C

    Ledsham, West Yorkshire

    The 1540 date comes from The Yorkshireman's 2025 round-up, and the pub's own site states no founding date. The national heritage list has now been searched across the village: it holds ten entries at Ledsham, among them the church, the old vicarage, Sir John Lewis's Cottages and the telephone kiosk that stands beside the inn, and none at all for the Chequers. So there is no listing description to date the walls, and

    Claims 1540; no early record found.

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Common questions

Is the Bingley Arms really Britain's oldest pub?
Historic England's listing describes a mid-eighteenth-century building with a 1738 datestone and finds no evidence for the AD 953 claim, noting that Domesday Book mentions no pubs at all. The big fireplaces, Dutch oven and reputed priest holes are genuine features of an eighteenth-century Yorkshire inn.
Which West Yorkshire pub has the oldest building?
The Old Bridge Inn at Ripponden, on the tested evidence. Historic England records a cruck truss of about the sixteenth century and seventeenth-century panelling behind a stone exterior of the mid-eighteenth century, with the first recorded landlord, John Hurstwood, serving in 1754.
Is the Old Bridge Inn from 1307?
The pub cites a 1307 record of the yeoman-clothier family who owned the site, which is a record of landholding rather than of an inn. Its documented pub history begins in 1754. An 1882 restoration reportedly removed some 250 layers of whitewash from the interior.
What about the Chequers Inn at Ledsham?
Regional press credit it with a founding date of 1540, which we have not been able to confirm from a listing entry or a document, and the pub's own site does not state a date. It is an ivy-clad country inn east of Leeds, now known for local sourcing and seasonal cooking.