Pint Passport
Long tile-hung and timber-framed pub behind a clipped hedge, brick stacks and red parasolsPhoto: Mertbiol · public domain
  • The same pub from further along the road, deep tiled roofs stepping down to a rendered wing
  • Tile-hung pub in bright sun with photinia hedging in front and its timber-framed end to the road

Photo: Mertbiol · public domain · Photo: Mark Percy · licence

No. 55 of the Top 100

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The White Hart

Petworth Road, Witley GU8 5PH

Grade C · TraditionTrading · checked Sept 2026

The White Hart is dated 1300 by CAMRA. No earlier record has been found.

Claimed
1300
First record
none found
Building
no single date

The building. Timber-framed hall house, now a public house: C15 with C17 alterations, whitewashed brick below and fishscale tile hanging above, extended at the front left in the early C20 — we give it no single date because Historic England dates the hall house to the C15 without a year.

Directions
  • Food
  • Beer garden
  • Village
  • Fireplaces

How old is it, really?

How to read this ribbon
Dated 1300 by CAMRA; no early record found.

Hatched: 726 years claimed with no document found yet.

The claim

A tile-hung village pub on the Petworth road, with a hall-house frame behind the whitewash, inglenooks at both ends and star-shaped stacks where the extension meets the old house. Food runs to nine most evenings and the garden is busy in summer. Punch holds the freehold and the beer range is short but kept.

What the records show

CAMRA describes the White Hart as a 14th-century timber-framed pub, and the village adds that George Eliot lodged nearby and that Edward VI is supposed to have visited. Historic England lists a C15 hall house with C17 alterations, tile-hung above whitewashed brick under a steeply pitched hipped roof, extended in the early C20. The frame is medieval, then, but a century later than the claim, and no record of drinking here in the 1300s was found, which keeps this at C rather than B.

What to look for inside

  • Medieval hall house behind the tile hanging
  • Star-shaped chimney stacks at the junction with the extension
  • Tradition of a visit by Edward VI

Visiting

The White Hart is in Witley, England, at Petworth Road, Witley GU8 5PH. We do not list opening times, because they change; the pub’s own site is the place to check before you set out.

Directions in your maps app

Sources

  1. historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1096902
  2. camra.org.uk/pubs/white-hart-witley-151417
  3. www.british-history.ac.uk/vch/surrey/vol3/pp61-69
  4. ratings.food.gov.uk/business/165341

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

Run this pub? There is a badge for it
Checked by OldPubs: The White Hart dated 1300

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.

Other old pubs near Witley

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