The Old Bell, Rye — dated 1400

The Old Bell

33 The Mint, Rye TN31 7EN

Grade C · TraditionTrading · checked Sept 2026

The Old Bell is dated 1400 by CAMRA. No earlier record has been found.

Claimed

1400

First record

none found

Building

no single date

The building. Timber-framed, sharing one roof span with the neighbouring house on The Mint and probably once a single building; front much altered, mock-Tudor extension added about 1930 and the interior refitted in 1934 — we give it no single date because the listing describes an altered timber frame without dating it, and much of what is visible is of 1930 and 1934.

Historic interior

Real ale

Food

Legend

Smuggling

The claim

A dark, low pub on The Mint, at the foot of Rye's hill, with a 1930s interior of carved panelling, a snug and doors still lettered Public Bar and Private Bar. CAMRA rates the fittings of special national interest. Food, cask beer and a garden behind; the smugglers' tunnel story comes free.

What the records show

CAMRA gives the Old Bell a 15th-century date and Rye tells of a smugglers' passage running from here to the Mermaid Inn. Historic England is unhelpfully brief: a timber-framed building sharing a roof span with number 32, probably one house originally, its front much altered, with a mock-Tudor extension added about 1930. CAMRA's own heritage note records that the pub was tiny until Star Brewery bought and demolished the warehouse next door, and that most of the fittings date from a 1934 refit. A Rye historian working from the town's records in 1847 lists the inns of the town in the mid-18th century — the Bull Head, the George, the Fortune, the Dolphin and the Lyon — and no Bell is among them. So the frame may well be late medieval; nothing dates it, and nothing records drinking here in the 1400s.

What to look for inside

Interior largely from the 1934 Star Brewery refit
Doors lettered Public Bar and Private Bar survive
Told of a smugglers' passage to the Mermaid Inn

Visiting

The Old Bell is in Rye, England, at 33 The Mint, Rye TN31 7EN. We do not list opening times, because they change; the pub’s own site is the place to check before you set out.

oldbellrye.co.uk Directions in your maps app