The Greyhound Inn

History

When Cotehill lost its village shop and its bus service, the Greyhound opened a community shop inside the pub, so villagers and the surrounding hamlets had somewhere to buy essentials again. At the opening they made the pub's oldest customer VIP for the day: Mary Stubbs, ninety-five, still in a couple of times a week. It drew regional TV and BBC local radio. It's part of the Pub is the Hub scheme, and it created volunteering and a meeting place to counter the isolation.

That's the same instinct as the Twelve Men at the Plough and the manorial courts at the Wheatsheaf, three centuries on: the pub as the thing the village runs itself from.

Its history runs back before 1832. Cotehill, a hilltop village off the A6, had a second pub, the Retreat Inn, which started as a beerhouse and stood a few yards from this one; the Board closed it in August 1916. The Greyhound it kept: the scheme bought it in 1918 and sold it in 1973, and its sign went on show at the Inn Signs Exhibition in London in 1936.

There are two Greyhounds on this site now, this and the one at Burgh by Sands, in the village where Edward I died: opposite sides of the district, same heraldic name.

New owners took it on in 2016 and put two changing Tirril ales on. Log burner, home-cooked food from local suppliers, local casks, a games room with pool and darts, quizzes, bingo and monthly live music. Noted for its real chips.