(The Bell at Stilton has stories to tell of a famous cheese, a highwayman and a famous horseman)

It was Samuel Johnson who said "There is nothing which has yet been contrived by man, by which so much happiness is produced as by a good tavern or Inn." Mine host of the Bell Inn at Stilton near Peterborough, would dearly like his establishment to justify the sentiment.

To explore the Bell's charm and mystery, we need to delve into the past. The Inn, and the village itself, thrived in an age when the High Street and North Street were part of the Great North Road, formerly the famous Roman road called Ermine Street. The Coaching Era, from the 1630's to the 1840's, was the period of the Inn's prosperity. Coaches brought people and, significantly, mail. Stilton was so lucrative a posting-station its innkeepers were willing to accept without pay the position of postmaster, and even to offer £40 cash down to obtain it. When Stilton was a major posting stage, it supported as many as 14 public houses and inns.

The Bell Inn dates back to 1500 (though its origins could be even earlier, as there is a record of a local innkeeper in 1437). From 1500 to 1515 Edward Tebald and his wife Alice owned the Bell. We know that their daughter Margaret and her husband William Redehede sued her parent's tenant for possession, but little else from those early days. Today's building dates from 1642, the date marked on the southern gable, and the year in which the Civil War began. It was originally built of oolitic limestone and slates of Colleyweston stone. The architect's plans for the 1990 restoration are, astonishingly, almost identical to the plans now lodged in the Bodleian Library, Oxford, for the work carried out in 1736. They show a similar courtyard enclosed by the projecting wings of the inn, and a mullion-windowed house, with a central carriageway in the middle of the front block.