History...

...The Old Crown Hotel was a 16th Century Coaching Inn, which was re-fronted in Georgian times. There is a Cobbled Courtyard, from which there is a fine example of an Elizabethan external stairway, called the Judges staircase, which was access to the Manorial Courts which sat in the Court Room on the first floor. A tunnel leads off towards the church from the cellars. Note the stained glass window in the downstairs bar which features a Lancastrian Red Rose (picture in Crown Gallery 1). After King Stephen's reign royal roses combined white with red. This rose is probably 14th century glass. The garages and storerooms at the rear were all once stables and as the plaque to the front of the Inn notes the Crown as it was then was home to the Royalist Cavalry between 1644 and 1646. And now for The Old Crown Inn's earliest Testimonial as far as we know on record - The town was described by Thomas Baskerville about 1681 as 'pretty well built, with some good inns for entertainment, of which the Crown is chief.' This still arguably remains the case today! In the 17th Century the Crown Inn Housed the Post Office which gained the Inn significant upturn in Travelers on the Post Coach from London to Gloucester.

Henry James Pye (1745-1813)
Henry Pye depicted in this photograph is one of Faringdon's most famous past locals, a poet, he gained his Poet Laureateship in 1790 and was Poet Laureate until his death. One of the threads that turns up again and again in his poetry (web mistress's note - I read a lot of it while getting reasonably relevant quotes for this site!) is that he liked nothing more than taking long walks through the country side around Faringdon and pondering on the nature and the elements around him.

Henry Pye will go down in laureate history as the man who lost the wine. For some unknown reason, he commuted the 'butt of sack' for the princely sum of £27. Although he envisaged it would top up his pension, it was actually included within the £100 payment. Thus, even up to the 1920s, the laureate was paid £72 plus £27 'in lieu of sack'.(sack = wine, specifically Canary Wine)Here is Pye's epic work on Alfred the Great and the description of the burning of the cakes. Another famous work of his was Aerophorion which was about balloon flight. (Web mistress note - I like "The Triumph of Fashion" best!), for more on HJP go to the links page. Excerpts of Henry's works are scattered on nearly all of the pages of The Old Crown Inn web site.
Picture from the book - Henry James Pye, Poems on Various Subjects. London: Printed for John Stockdale, 1787. DeB. Eb 1787 P