The Bell Inn

The Bell Inn
Location within Nottingham
General information
Architectural style	Tudor/Georgian
Location	18 Angel Row, Old Market Square
Town or city	Nottingham
Country	England
Coordinates	52°57′13″N 1°09′09″W / 52.95356°N 1.15237°W / 52.95356; -1.15237
Completed	c.1437
Designations	Grade II listed

The Bell Inn is an ancient pub in Nottingham, England. Dating from around 1437, it claims, along with Ye Olde Trip to Jerusalem and Ye Olde Salutation Inn, to be the oldest pub in the city. In 1982 the pub became a Grade II listed building.

Sometime before 1271Nottingham Whitefriars established a friary on what is now Friar Lane with lands that included a guesthouse on the site of what is now The Bell Inn. The building was constructed as a refectory for the monks of the monastery on Beastmarket Hill; according to dendrochronological dating of timbers, it was built around 1420. It became a secular alehouse in 1539 (following the Dissolution of the Monasteries by Henry VIII) taking its name from the Angelus bell that hung outside.

The earliest known written reference to the property is in 1638, when, on the death of Robert Sherwin, a former Lord Mayor and Sheriff of Nottingham, his rights to half the rental income were bequeathed to several churches for them to distribute to the poor of Nottingham.

John White bequeathed the freehold of the Inn to his wife Mary in 1732 and two years later she sold it to wealthy local banker Abel Smith. The freehold subsequently passed down the Smith family line to the politician and banker Abel Smith, in 1756, and then to Robert Smith, 1st Baron Carrington, in 1782.

Jane Lart purchased the freehold from Lord Carrington in 1803 and the leasehold from the Church in 1806 combining the two legally. Under the terms of the lease she also undertook extensive repairs of the building and constructed a Georgian frontage that allowed for the preservation of the rare crown post structure to this day.