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Long low whitewashed inn with a slate roof and strings of lights, on the square in a villagePhoto: Euan Nelson · licence

The Clachan Inn

2 The Square, Drymen G63 0BL

Grade C · TraditionTrading · checked Sept 2026

The Clachan Inn claims 1734. No earlier record has been found.

Claimed
1734
First record
none found
Building
no single date

The building. 18th century (claimed 1734) — we give it no single date because 18th century; 1734 is the pub’s claim.

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  • Real ale
  • Food
  • Rooms
  • Dog friendly

How old is it, really?

How to read this ribbon
Claims 1734; no early record found.

Hatched: 292 years claimed with no document found yet.

The claim

On Drymen's village square at the start of the Rob Roy Way, the Clachan claims Scotland's oldest surviving pub licence, granted in 1734. Its first licensee is said to have been Mistress Gow, Rob Roy MacGregor's sister. A family-run free house with a wood-burning stove, church-pew seating, cask ales and three letting rooms, it welcomes dogs and walkers.

What the records show

The inn, the village heritage trail and CAMRA all repeat a licence of 1734 and a first licensee called Mistress Gow, said to be Rob Roy's sister; the licence itself has never been produced. The national designations have now been searched across Drymen rather than left open: they hold the Winnock Hotel on the other side of the square and 4 The Square, a cottage the record dates 1864 from a window lintel, and no entry at all for the Clachan. So there is no listing description to date these walls, and the 1734 rests on the village's own telling. What is certain is the trade: CAMRA's Forth Valley branch has the Clachan in the Good Beer Guide, licensed from eleven in the morning Monday to Saturday and half past twelve on Sunday, with two handpumps of Loch Lomond and other Scottish beers, in freehold hands and with children admitted until nine.

What to look for inside

  • Claims Scotland's oldest registered pub licence (1734)
  • First licensee reputedly Rob Roy's sister
  • Hidden salt box in the old fireplace from the salt-tax era

Visiting

The Clachan Inn is in Drymen, Scotland, at 2 The Square, Drymen G63 0BL. We do not list opening times, because they change; the pub’s own site is the place to check before you set out.

clachaninndrymen.co.uk Directions in your maps app

Sources

  1. www.clachaninndrymen.co.uk/history/
  2. camra.org.uk/pubs/clachan-inn-drymen-168603
  3. www.drymen.org/heritage-trail
  4. ratings.food.gov.uk/business/53909
  5. portal.historicenvironment.scot/designation/LB49636

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

Run this pub? There is a badge for it
Checked by OldPubs: The Clachan Inn claims 1734

Free to put on your own site, no permission needed. It shows what the pub claims and what the records support, and it changes when the data does.

How to use it, and how to change what it says — if you have a document we have not seen, we would like to read it.

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

Raise a glass

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The snug

What people remember about the Clachan 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.

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