Long white thatched inn on the far bank of the Great Ouse, reflected in still water

Photo: John Sutton · licence

Photo: Richard Humphrey · licence

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The Old Ferry Boat Inn

Back Lane, Holywell, St Ives, Cambridgeshire PE27 4TG

Grade C · TraditionTrading · checked Oct 2026

The Old Ferry Boat Inn claims AD 560. The records say 1841.

Claimed: AD 560
First record: 1841
Building: no single date

The building. 17th century with an earlier cross-wing (Historic England); much restored. The Royal Commission's Huntingdonshire inventory reads the cross-wing as late 16th or early 17th century and the rest of the house as an early-18th-century rebuild, so the two surveys agree about the wing and disagree about the main range.

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Thatched
Riverside
Haunted
Real ale
Food
Rooms

How old is it, really?

How to read this ribbon

Hatched: 1281 years the pub claims but no document confirms. Solid: 185 years on record.

The claim

A thatched, low-beamed inn on the banks of the Great Ouse, the Old Ferry Boat marks a river crossing used for centuries. Its claim to date from AD 560 is pure tradition, but the setting is timeless: riverside lawns, a handful of bedrooms and a resident legend in the ghost of Juliet Tewsley, said to walk on the anniversary of her death.

What the records show

The AD 560 date is tradition only; no early documentary source has been published. The listed building is 17th-century with an older cross-wing, and a continuous run of named innkeepers is recorded only from 1841. The run of innkeepers is published by Capturing Cambridge, the Museum of Cambridge's house-by-house record of the county, which lists the household at the inn from 1841 - Thomas Metcalf, his wife Alice nee Christmas and two daughters - and gives no trade against any of them. The first person it calls a publican here is Alice Metcalf, widow, in 1851, and the Jacksons follow in 1881 and 1891. The record therefore names the house with a family in it in 1841 and names nobody selling drink there until 1851.

Dated evidence for The Old Ferry Boat Inn, earliest first
Year	What	Source
AD 560	Claimed founding	The pub
1841	First record of a drinking house here	Capturing Cambridge, the Museum of Cambridge's house records

What to look for inside

Claims to be England's oldest inn (AD 560)
Said to be haunted by Juliet Tewsley
A ferry operated here into the 1930s
Designated an Asset of Community Value

Visiting

The Old Ferry Boat Inn is in Holywell, England, at Back Lane, Holywell, St Ives, Cambridgeshire PE27 4TG. We do not list opening times, because they change; the pub’s own site is the place to check before you set out.

greenekinginns.co.uk Directions in your maps app

Sources

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

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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

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The snug

What people remember about the Old Ferry Boat 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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