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The Old Silent Inn offers not only fine cuisine but a traditional pub and restaurant steeped
in history. Starting life as the New Inn and then changing to the Eagle Inn and eventually to the present name of The Old
Silent Inn. Although the Inn dates back over 400 years earliest records show the premises to have been a family farming
business in 1822. The antiquity and mystique of the Old Silent has inspired several authors including Halliwell Sutcliffe
and Martha Grimes to write fictitious novels based upon the Country Inn. It is said that Bonnie Prince Charlie used the Inn as a hideout after he fled from Derby. The young Prince stayed at the inn for several weeks, relying on the silence of the locals for his safety and freedom. The villagers were told to ‘keep silent’ even under the threat of having their tongues cut out, there was also a 30,000 guinea reward (equivalent to about a £1,000,000 in today's money) placed on his head. Eventually someone told on him and the soldiers came down the hill from Stanbury to capture him, The wishing well restaurant at that time was a stable and Bonnie Prince Charlie's horse was always saddled up ready to go. When the soldiers were spotted his comrades went out to stop them, Bonnie Prince Charlie jumped on his Horse and made haste towards Lancashire. Meanwhile a battle ensued and one of his comrades was killed and he has become one of our resident ghosts often seen at the bar with swept back shoulder length dark hair, a long nose, he is seen wearing a trench coat and boots. In recognition of the act of the villagers keeping silent, the Inn was renamed The Old Silent Inn hence the present name. Earliest records for the name of the Old Silent Inn date back to a book called Ricroft of Withins by Halliwell Sutcliffe published in 1908. With all the mysticism and tales that have been told, there is no escaping the fact that this historical Inn has had many a ghostly sighting, from two young children heard giggling to an ex landlady ringing a ghostly bell which summoned the wild cats of Stanbury that she would feed and of course a large male figure seen at the bar. Halliwell Sutcliffe first named the Old Silent Inn |
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