The Ancient Ram Inn, Wotton-under-Edge

The Ancient Ram Inn stands at Potters Pond in Wotton-under-Edge, close to St Mary's Church. It is a late medieval house, remodelled in the sixteenth century and tied to the town's wool merchants, and it is listed Grade II*. Tree-ring dating puts it just after 1495, not the 1145 so often claimed.

History

How old is it?

The Ram Inn is often said to date from 1145, and to have been built for the masons of the church. The evidence of the timbers says otherwise. Tree-ring dating, published by Miles and Bridge in 2014 and summarised by the heritage writer Triskele Heritage, places the main building just after timbers felled in the winter of 1495 to 1496. Historic England's listing calls it late medieval, remodelled in the middle or late sixteenth century. The house's own website says its deeds describe it as dating from time immemorial; that is legal language for an old title, not a date.

A church house?

The listing records a late medieval roof inside with no smoke blackening, though it notes the roof has been cleaned. That suggests it was built with a first-floor hall rather than a hall open to the roof with a fire on the floor, and its position by the church suggests to the listing's authors that it may once have been a church house, where a parish held its feasts and brewed its ale.

Wool and the Ram

Tenter hooks, used to stretch woven cloth, and documents naming a series of wool merchants from the sixteenth century tie the house to Wotton's cloth trade. It is called The Ram in a deed of 1820, and it was an inn for part of its life.

The haunted house

In the later twentieth century the house became famous for ghost stories under its owner John Humphries, and it is now marketed as one of the most haunted buildings in England. None of that is history in the record, and we leave it to the house's own events.

What to look for

From the road you see a long rubble and timber house. Look for:

• the jettied first-floor gable on the right, timber-framed with close studding and arched bracing;
• the sixteenth-century studded plank door under a depressed arch.

Visiting

The Ancient Ram Inn is a private house. You can see it from the road at any time; inside is open only on events the house runs and sells on its own website, mostly overnight and afternoon ghost hunts. It also holds open days, but when we checked in October 2026 its open days page had no new dates. Check its website for what is on.

Getting there

The house is at Potters Pond, at the bottom of Church Street beside St Mary's. Potters Pond council car park is next to it, with more parking at The Chipping in the town centre, and there are free public toilets on Ropewalk.

On foot, Wotton, the Tyndale Monument and Coombe Hill starts on Gloucester Street, about 450m away, and the Cotswold Way passes through the town.

Nearby

St Mary's Church, with its Berkeley brasses, is a few steps away, and the Hugh Perry Almshouses are up Church Street. Above the town are Jubilee Clump and the Tyndale Monument. For food, the Royal Oak is on Haw Street.