The Skirrid Inn, Llanvihangel Crucorney

The Skirrid Inn

Llanvihangel Crucorney, Abergavenny NP7 8DH

Grade C · TraditionTrading · checked Sept 2026

The Skirrid Inn claims 1110. No earlier record has been found.

Claimed

1110

First record

none found

Building

no single date

The building. Mid-to-late 17th century and apparently purpose-built as an inn: the roof timbers, the ceilings of the principal ground-floor rooms, the oak stair rising to the attics in its own tower and the main door frame are 17th-century, and the 17th-century look of the outside is largely a 19th-century rebuilding in that style (Glamorgan-Gwent Historic Environment Record, now Heneb; Cadw listing).

Haunted

Rooms

Food

Real ale

Beer garden

The claim

Below the Skirrid mountain north of Abergavenny, this stone inn bills itself as Wales's oldest pub, with a story going back more than 900 years. Its fabric is a well-preserved 17th-century inn with a fine oak staircase, but ghost tales of hangings from the stair beam keep it famous. It serves pub classics, real ales and has three rooms.

What the records show

Cadw's listing calls it a fine C17 purpose-built inn and says it is not medieval despite its claims. The Glamorgan-Gwent Historic Environment Record, now kept by the Heneb HER Charitable Trust, says the same from its own survey work: record 01623g describes a mid-to-late 17th-century building that appears to have been purpose-built as an inn, with 17th-century roof timbers, ground-floor ceilings, oak stair and door frame, and an exterior whose 17th-century appearance is largely the result of a 19th-century rebuilding that replaced every window in 17th-century style. It states plainly that the building is popularly supposed to be of medieval origin and that there is no evidence for anything earlier than the 17th century, and it cites Peter Smith's Houses of the Welsh Countryside, which classes the house as a stone building of regional type A with a lateral chimney and inside cross-passage, and the trust's own survey of Monmouthshire historic settlements of 1996-97. The Royal Commission's National Monuments Record of Wales carries the house as NPRN 20846, a public house of the post-medieval period. A medieval predecessor on a pilgrim route is speculation, and courthouse hangings are undocumented.

What to look for inside

Claims to be Wales's oldest pub
Legend of court hangings from the staircase beam
Featured on Most Haunted
Fine 17th-century oak staircase

Visiting

The Skirrid Inn is in Llanvihangel Crucorney, Wales, at Llanvihangel Crucorney, Abergavenny NP7 8DH. We do not list opening times, because they change; the pub’s own site is the place to check before you set out.

skirridinn.com Directions in your maps app