Greyhound Inn

History

Opened Converted to a pub in 1936

Was

A manor house

Converted

1936, by the State Management Scheme

Listed

Grade II

Nearby

The spot where Edward I died in 1307

A king of England died a few hundred yards from this pub. Edward I, Longshanks, the Hammer of the Scots, died on Burgh Marsh in 1307 while marching north to fight Robert the Bruce. A monument marks the spot, and there's a statue of him beside the Greyhound. Burgh by Sands sits on the line of Hadrian's Wall, too, where the Roman fort of Aballava stood, so the pub is directly on the Wall walking route, out on its western stretch. Not to be confused with the Greyhound at Cotehill.

How the Greyhound became the village pub depends on which account you read. The State Management Story has the scheme doing something unusual here: converting a manor house into a village pub in 1936, in its mature interwar phase, alongside the Crown Inn at Stanwix of 1937 but out on the Solway plain. The building is Grade II listed, so the old fabric is protected.

Historic England's gazetteer tells it differently. It has the Greyhound itself, a late eighteenth-century building, acquired and converted by the scheme in 1916, then altered in 1936-7 to serve teas and refreshments, which makes the 1930s work a remodelling of a pub the state already ran. The scheme's roll supports that much: a Greyhound at Burgh by Sands is there in 1920, at number 139.

Either way, 1936 changed the village. The Packhorse Inn had been the main pub in Burgh from before 1829, and Mike Tuer's records have it closing in 1936 when the Greyhound opened; it is the Pack Horse at number 104 on the 1920 roll. The gazetteer has the Pack Horse closing in 1936 but reopening later, until it was sold to its tenant in 1960. The Rat Trap Inn at Longburgh, down the road, closed the same year.

Hutchinson's History of Cumberland counted four public houses in Burgh parish in 1794, with two maltsters. By 1920 there were three on the scheme's roll, not two. Besides the Greyhound and the Pack Horse there is a Highland Laddie at number 94, almost certainly the Highland Laddie at Glasson, the hamlet in this parish two miles west, which is still trading and was refurbished and reopened in 2025. The roll places country pubs by parish rather than by hamlet, which is how the same thing happened at How Mill and at Heads Nook.

It is a large open-plan pub now, with a raised games area and pool table, a jukebox people actually use, a big outdoor area and three changing real ales, and camping on the village green. Food varies by season and it may shut early if quiet, so ring before you drive out.