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White rendered and timber-framed inn with a tiled roof, brick chimney and wrought-iron signPhoto: Acabashi · licence
  • Two white gabled bays with dark bargeboards and leaded windows above a row of parked cars

Photo: Bryn Holmes · licence

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The Olde Bell

High Street, Hurley, Maidenhead SL6 5LX

Grade C · TraditionTrading · checked Sept 2026

The Olde Bell claims 1135. No earlier record has been found.

Claimed
1135
First record
none found
Building
no single date

The building. Timber-framed, largely 16th-17th century with later alterations.

Pub website Directions
  • Rooms
  • Food
  • Beer garden

How old is it, really?

How to read this ribbon
Claims 1135; no early record found.

Hatched: 891 years claimed with no document found yet.

The claim

In a Thames-side village near Marlow, the Olde Bell claims to have welcomed travellers since 1135, when it served the guests of Hurley Priory. Today it is a stylish inn with bedrooms, a restaurant and a beamed bar. Wartime visitors reputedly included Churchill and Eisenhower, and Hollywood names followed in the decades after.

What the records show

The claim is the hotel's own: its history page says the Olde Bell first opened in 1135 as a guest house for visitors to the Benedictine priory, and it kept an 890th birthday in 2025. The foundation date is a long-standing tradition, not a documented licence. The surviving timber-framed building is Grade II* listed, but the earliest record of it trading as an inn has not been identified.

What to look for inside

  • Claimed to be one of the oldest hotels in the world
  • Legend of a tunnel to Hurley Priory
  • Said to have hosted Churchill and Eisenhower during WWII

Visiting

The Olde Bell is in Hurley, England, at High Street, Hurley, Maidenhead SL6 5LX. We do not list opening times, because they change; the pub’s own site is the place to check before you set out.

theoldebell.co.uk Directions in your maps app

Sources

  1. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Olde_Bell,_Hurley
  2. www.windsor.gov.uk/accommodation/the-olde-bell-p39913
  3. www.theoldebell.co.uk/about-us/history/
  4. www.british-history.ac.uk/vch/berks/vol3/pp152-160
  5. www.british-history.ac.uk/vch/berks/vol2/pp73-77
  6. ratings.food.gov.uk/business/734485
  7. www.theoldebell.co.uk/christmas/

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

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Checked by OldPubs: The Olde Bell claims 1135

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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The photographs above are other people's work, used under an open licence. Every photographer, licence and source page is named in the image credits.