The Angel and Royal, Grantham

The claim

A medieval inn front of pale ashlar on Grantham's High Street, with the heads of Edward III and his queen carved over the archway and the yard behind. The hotel says it has welcomed guests since 1203, when it holds that the Knights Templar built a hostel here; the county record calls what stood here an estate house of the order. Grade I listed, twenty-nine rooms, and a bar with two handpumps that anybody may drink at.

What the records show

The hotel's own front page says it has welcomed guests since 1203, and its history page is more careful than the story usually told about it: it says the house stands on ground believed to have belonged to the Knights Templar, and that tradition holds King John and his court lodged here on 23 February 1213. Nothing traced dates a drinking house to 1203. Lincolnshire's historic environment record describes what stood here as a camera of the Knights Templar — an estate house of the order rather than a public inn — possibly passing to the Knights Hospitaller after the Templars were suppressed in 1308. It dates the west wall largely to the fifteenth century and the entrance arch to no earlier than 1370, because the arch carries corbelled heads of Edward III and Philippa of Hainault; Historic England lists the building at grade I. So the standing front is a century and a half younger than the claim, and no document naming the Angel as an inn has been read here. A history of the Great North Road names Richard Leeming as tenant of the Angel Inn and an alderman of Grantham in 1666, and says the inn carried the town's post from the sixteenth century to the early nineteenth, but cites no record for either. That is why the grade is C. It is on this site because it is a hotel with a bar the public may use: the Grantham branch of the Campaign for Real Ale lists it with two handpumps in the main hotel bar, usually beer from Brewster's, and updated its entry in March 2026. The cocktail room called the Angel Bar is a separate thing and is booked in hour-long slots. Richard III is said to have signed the Duke of Buckingham's death warrant here in 1483, and the hotel shows a copy of the letter he wrote at Grantham; the letter itself does not name the house.

Dated evidence for The Angel and Royal, earliest first
Year	What	Source
1203	Claimed founding	The pub
c.1370	Present building	https://heritage-explorer.lincolnshire.gov.uk/Monument/MLI30501

What to look for inside

Carved heads of Edward III and Philippa of Hainault over the entrance arch
One of the few medieval inn fronts left standing in England
The Royal in the name comes from a visit by the Prince of Wales, later Edward VII, in 1866

Visiting

The Angel and Royal is in Grantham, England, at 3-5 High Street, Grantham NG31 6PN. We do not list opening times, because they change; the pub’s own site is the place to check before you set out.

angelandroyal.co.uk Directions in your maps app