Long thatched and whitewashed inn curving along a lane, with white chimneys and window boxes

No. 61 of the Top 100

The Cott Inn

Cott Lane, Dartington, Totnes TQ9 6HE

Grade C · TraditionTrading · checked Sept 2026

The Cott Inn claims 1320. No earlier record has been found.

Claimed: 1320
First record: none found
Building: no single date

The building. Thatched rendered stone rubble and possibly cob, early C17 or of earlier origins, remodelled probably later C17 and extended at both ends in the C18; three-room-and-through-passage plan with no evidence of an open hall (Historic England list entry 1291403) — we give it no single date because medieval, remodelled 17th century; 1307 is a cited foundation claim.

Pub website Directions

Thatched
Rooms
Food
Real ale
Beer garden
Dog friendly

How old is it, really?

How to read this ribbon

Hatched: 706 years claimed with no document found yet.

The claim

Under what is claimed to be one of Britain's longest thatched roofs, the Cott Inn has welcomed travellers on the old packhorse road to Totnes since, it says, about 1320. The cob-walled longhouse keeps rough-hewn beams and inglenooks. Named Great British Pub of the Year in 2019, it balances village local, dining pub and bedrooms.

What the records show

The thatched house is long, low and genuinely old, and the 1320 with the story of Johannes Cott is the inn's own, repeated by CAMRA. Historic England, which listed it Grade II on 11 November 1952, dates it early in the 17th century or of earlier origins, remodelled later that century and extended at both ends in the 18th: a three-room-and-through-passage house with gable-end stacks, a plank-and-muntin screen surviving in part, and a bar put into the central room in the 20th century. The entry considers whether that room was made from an open hall and says there is no evidence for one. So the fabric on the record is Stuart rather than medieval, no contemporary record of a hostelry here was found, and the 14th-century claim stands as tradition.

What to look for inside

Said to have one of the longest thatched roofs in Britain
Named after merchant Johannes Cott
Top British Pub at the 2019 Great British Pub Awards

Visiting

The Cott Inn is in Dartington, England, at Cott Lane, Dartington, Totnes TQ9 6HE. We do not list opening times, because they change; the pub’s own site is the place to check before you set out.

cottinn.co.uk Directions in your maps app

Sources

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

Run this pub? There is a badge for it

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.

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