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!
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