Local History

The Barge is at the epicentre of a plethora of ancient sites and tracks. Being a stones throw from the beginning of the Ridgeway, one of the oldest highways in the country dating back to the stone age, a few miles from the Avebury stone circle, the bronze age cathedral to Stonehenge's parish church and Silbury, the unexplained, manmade hill on the side of the A4 and just down the road from the West Kennet Long Barrow. Nearby the Norman churches of St Mary the Virgin in Alton Barnes and All Saints in Alton Priors are well worth a visit as is the WW2 memorial which is found a few hundred yards down the towpath from the pub.

The Barge Inn itself has a long and colourful history, built in 1810 to coincide with the opening of the Kennet and Avon Canal, it prospered alongside a waterway then busy with both commercial and passenger traffic.

Known in its heyday as the George, the establishment contained a slaughter house, coach house and stabling for four horses, as well as a brew house, hop store, bake house, smoke house and cart shed. The north section of the ground floor included a grocery and general stores, as between 1871 and 1957 a number of licensees also acted as local grocers.

Sadly, fire broke out on the 14th December, 1858 largely destroying the original building and preceding what the Devizes & Wiltshire Gazette referred to as a “disgraceful scene. Soon after the fire was extinguished …… the cellars were entered …. And there was nothing but drunkenness and confusion.”

However, due to its importance, the Barge Inn was rebuilt in just six months, an event commemorated by a plaque at the north gable end. The Inn, which now had no fewer than 24 rooms within the main building and 15 fireplaces including those in the bake house and barns, flourished along with other services at Honeystreet such as the sawmills, builders wharf and coal stores.

The canal became more neglected with the arrival of the railways, but this did not prevent the Barge Inn from being sold by auction on Wednesday April 7th, 1897 (“at three o’clock punctually”), to T&J Usher of Bristol, for the then considerable sum of £2,100. Today, a hundred years later, the wheel of history has turned full circle: the present owners, re-acquiring the Barge Inn in 1992, are the well known Ushers of Trowbridge.

This transaction was marginally preceded by the mysterious appearance of crop circles in the vicinity, causing many students of these phenomena to swell the ranks of customers who include cyclists, walkers, canoeists, narrowboat enthusiasts and occasionally musicians.

Amongst these people are many who take advantage of the leafy camping and caravan sites to the south west of the main buildings, and who enjoy the clear sight, beyond the canal, of the White Horse of Alton Barnes, commenced at about the same time as the original building and completed after the first of the foremen had - so it is said - absconded with his advance and later been hanged for sheep stealing.