Photo: Hugh Llewelyn from Keynsham, UK · licence

Church House Inn

Church Walk, Stoke Gabriel, Devon TQ9 6SD

Grade B · Building datedTrading · checked Sept 2026

Church House Inn is dated 1500 by CAMRA. No earlier record has been found.

Claimed: 1500
First record: none found
Building: no single date

The building. Circa 16th century, in the words of the national register: colour-washed stone rubble under a slate roof with gabled ends, two storeys, chamfered and moulded ceiling beams with roll-moulded joists, a roll-moulded screen at the south end and a large fireplace with a chamfered wooden lintel at the north.

Directions

Real ale
Historic interior
Village
Real fire
Fireplaces

How old is it, really?

How to read this ribbon

Hatched: 526 years claimed with no document found yet.

The claim

A two-roomed pub beside the church at Stoke Gabriel, still owned by the parish that built it, with an oak partition, carved beams, an inglenook and the village stocks outside the door. CAMRA calls it the least-altered of Devon's many church house inns and dates it to the sixteenth century. It shut in January 2025 and is pouring again.

What the records show

A church house: built by the parish beside its church, in this case said to have housed the masons who built it, and later used as the courthouse, which is what the old stocks outside the door are for. The national register of listed buildings enters it as a public house of circa the sixteenth century, and describes stone rubble under a slate roof, moulded ceiling beams, a roll-moulded screen at the south end and a large fireplace at the north; it has been listed at grade II since 9 February 1961. That is fabric of the century the house claims, with no document of drink sold here at the date, which is what a grade B says. The parish church adds the trade the building was put up for: the churchwardens brewed and sold ale at festivals, especially at Whitsun, as a fund-raising exercise that died out with the rise of Puritanism in the first half of the seventeenth century. CAMRA, which calls it the least-altered of Devon's many church house inns, dates it the same way.

What to look for inside

Still owned by the church, and closed around Sunday evensong for good manners
A mummified cat of about 200 years, found nearby, in a glass case in the wall
The village stocks stand outside the door

Visiting

Church House Inn is in Stoke Gabriel, England, at Church Walk, Stoke Gabriel, Devon TQ9 6SD. We do not list opening times, because they change; the pub’s own site is the place to check before you set out.

Directions in your maps app

Sources

Church Walk at Stoke Gabriel in 1985, drinkers on the inn’s front terrace and the church tower behind — Then and now
Photographed about 1985, and today. Church Walk in 1985, the terrace in use.
Every pub we have a pair for

Know something we don’t?Suggest a correctionLast checked Sept 2026

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Above: the record · Below: what readers rememberThe record ends here

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The snug

What people remember about Church House Inn

Nobody has written about this pub yet. These are readers’ own recollections, not our records — we check documents, not memories, and a memory never moves a date or a grade.

Were you a regular here?

We are after the things a record cannot hold: the landlord’s name, what was behind the bar, the room that is not there any more, the year the fire was moved. One paragraph is plenty.

The snug opens shortly. Until it does, send it to hello@oldpubs.com and we will put it on this page with your name on it.