George Hotel, Chepstow
George Hotel, ChepstowThe George Hotel, formerly The George Inn, is a public house and hotel in Chepstow, Monmouthshire, Wales. It is located next to the Chepstow Town Gate at the foot of Moor Street, and was once an important coaching inn. Although there has been an inn on the site since 1620, the current building dates from 1899.
The George was established in about 1620 by Margaret Cleyton, the owner of the adjoining Gate House and many other properties in the area. It was first recorded in 1624, with the landlord named as William Jones. The George and the Gate House are positioned on either side of the town wall, and may have been linked by tunnels. In 1627 Mrs Cleyton bequeathed the inn to her daughter and son-in-law, Elinor and James Flower. During the English Civil War, several military officers staying at the inn were killed in their rooms by intruders in separate incidents.
In later centuries the George became a centre of Chepstow's social and community life, with inquests and petty sessions sometimes being held there. In the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, it became one of Chepstow's main coaching inns and a popular base for tourists on the "Wye Tour". Coaches left the George regularly for Bath, Brecon and Ross-on-Wye in 1835. In 1842, William Makepeace Thackeray called it "one of the cleanest, neatest, cheerfulest, fresh-salmon-givingest Inns to be found anywhere". The George advertised itself in 1859 as catering for 'Families, Tourists, and Commercial Gentlemen'. It became a centre for local auctions, and for hustings during local elections, as well as being used by travelling dentists. Many local organizations, such as the Chepstow Cricket Club, Chepstow Farmers' Club, and Chepstow Hunt Steeplechase Committee, held their meetings and functions at the inn in the later nineteenth century, as did the independent freeholders of the county of Huntingdon, Cotteswold Naturalists' Field Club, and the Institute of British Foundrymen. The property itself paid a small annual tithe to the manor of Porthcasseg near Tintern.
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