The Fox Inn, Corfe Castle

The Fox Inn

8 West Street, Corfe Castle, Wareham BH20 5HD

Grade C · TraditionTrading · checked Sept 2026

The Fox Inn claims 1568. No earlier record has been found.

Claimed

1568

First record

none found

Building

no single date

The building. Historic England's list entry describes a small inn in a terrace, of the eighteenth century: rubble stone walls, a stone slate roof, brick stacks at the rear, two storeys, a ledged door to a rear passage and a panelled door to the inn with a three-light shop-type window between them under ornamental arched lights, two first-floor casements with fanlights, and added rear wings in matching construction reached from the passage. The entry works from the Royal Commission's inventory of Dorset, volume II South-East, published in 1970, where the house is monument 121. The house and CAMRA's East Dorset branch both call it 16th-century.

Castle

Real ale

Food

Beer garden

Dog friendly

The claim

A Purbeck-stone free house on West Street that calls itself the oldest pub in Corfe Castle. The house dates itself to the sixteenth century and CAMRA's East Dorset branch agrees, but the Historic England listing that branch cites describes an inn of the eighteenth. The garden looks toward the castle the Parliamentarians slighted in 1646, and there are Dorset ales, an old servery and a weekend barbecue.

What the records show

The grade here rested on the pub and CAMRA's East Dorset branch both describing a sixteenth-century building, with the listing cited as though it agreed. It does not. Historic England's entry 1278386, first listed on 20 November 1959 as The Fox Inn, West Street, with group value, describes a small inn in a terrace of the eighteenth century: rubble stone, stone slate roof, brick stacks at the rear, two storeys, a ledged door opening to a passage through to the back and a panelled door to the inn, with a three-light shop-type window between them under ornamental arched lights, two casements with fanlights above, and rear wings added in matching construction and reached from the passage. Nothing in it is sixteenth-century. Read in full on 17 September 2026, the entry also names its authority, which the page had not: the Royal Commission on Historical Monuments' inventory of Dorset, volume II South-East, published in 1970, in which this house is monument 121. So the eighteenth century is a surveyed date from a published inventory rather than a line in a list. The specific year 1568, which circulates in secondary sources, has never been traced to a document, and the house itself claims only the sixteenth century and to be reputed the oldest pub in the village. CAMRA also judges that too few old fittings survive inside for its inventory of historic interiors.

What to look for inside

Views toward the ruins of Corfe Castle
Grade II listed Tudor building

Visiting

The Fox Inn is in Corfe Castle, England, at 8 West Street, Corfe Castle, Wareham BH20 5HD. We do not list opening times, because they change; the pub’s own site is the place to check before you set out.

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