The Three Swans

The Three Swans is one of Hungerford’s great old coaching inns – evidenced by the milestone mounted on its front wall showing it lies midway between Oxford and Salisbury.
Today the earliest surviving record of an inn on the site is from a document of 1645. It recalls that on 15 March 1645 Thomas Smith, gentleman, granted scholarships for two local poor boys at a cost of 40 shillings per annum, funded by the rental income from ‘an inn on the east side of the High Street called The Three Swans … in the occupation then and now of Thomas Strangeways, vintner’. Another record reveals that Thomas Strangeways was a vintner in Hungerford in 1632, so it’s possible he was at The Three Swans then, or even earlier.
John Pearce bought the inn in 1773 for £400, and soon the old timber frame inn was given a Georgian “make-over”, probably giving it something like its present-day frontage.
The list of owners and publicans of the Three Swans is very long, with some very interesting characters!

24 High Street

This property is an architectural treasure. It is a timber frame property whose detailed history is known right back to 1470.

26 High Street

This is another splendid and very large timber frame building, dating from the 16th century. It is one of the few with its original gables facing the High Street.

33 High Street

A casual glance at this wonderful brick frontage suggests that the house is Georgian. However, look more carefully and you will see that it has four bays on the second floor, five bays on the first floor and six bays on the ground floor. The re-fronting was added to an ancient timber-frame house, probably in 1710.

42 High Street.

This was built in 1814 as Hungerford’s National School. The adjacent building (41 High Street) was refurbished for the headmaster and clad in Bath stone.

85 & 86 High Street.

Despite the appearance of the High Street frontage, 85 & 86 High Street comprise a two-bay cruck house, which had a single bay open hall at its north end (86 High Street).

Croft Hall.

The Croft Hall opened in 1900. The site was originally part of the land used for the Free Grammar School, founded in 1635, which closed in 1884. In 1898 the school building was sold to Sir William Pearce of Chilton Lodge and soon demolished.

St. Lawrence’s Church

The Parish Church of St. Lawrence was built in 1814-16 in Georgian Gothic style. It is adjacent to the Kennet and Avon canal, and the Bath stone for the church was the largest of the early contracts for the canal company after the canal had opened in 1810.

The Bear Hotel

The Bear is one of the grand coaching inns of England, with a long and rich history. It is thought to have developed a lodging house for the adjacent medieval Priory of St John (see War Memorial) which was founded by 1232. There is documentary proof of its use as a Hospice in 1464.

The Croft

The Croft is a quiet green, lying away from the hustle and bustle of the High Street. It probably originated as the village green of the original vill of Hungerford, before the "new" medieval town was laid out slightly to the east sometime between 1180 and 1250.

The John o’Gaunt Inn.

By 1764 it was Hungerford's first workhouse, but when a larger workhouse was required in 1782, the paupers were moved to the "High House", now Charnham Close, 26 Charnham Street.

The Jubilee Bridge.

The brick bridge over the Kennet and Avon canal was designed by John Rennie and built in 1799. For the first 100 years of its life, it carried nothing heavier than horses and wagons. Through the 20th century and onwards, however, it has had to support increasingly heavy vehicles.

The Methodist Church and School.

There is a long and proud history of non-conformism in Hungerford. Records show that John Wesley visited Hungerford 14 times between 1739 and 1786.

The Town Hall and Corn Exchange.

The Town Hall and Corn Exchange were built in 1871. There had been three earlier town halls dating from the 13th century. All had been in the middle of the marketplace. A new town clock was given to the town in 1862 and the cupola of the 1786 town hall was much altered to accommodate the clock. However, the changes made the building unstable, and it was decided to build a new town hall, including a large and impressive clock tower.

The Tri-Service Station.

On the land between the old Ebenezer Wesleyan Chapel (on your left) and the Hungerford Hub (Library, on your right) a huge animal feed mill was built in 1932 – the Great Western Mill. It was a big employer in the town.

The War Memorial

This is Hungerford’s main War Memorial. It was built on the island in Bridge Street which had, since 1232, been the site of the ancient Priory of St John the Baptist. The Priory was dissolved by Henry VIII.

United Reformed Church.

The plaque above the church door states that this church opened as a Congregational Church in 1840. The Nonconformist congregation, founded in Hungerford in 1671, moved to this site in 1793.