A group of Carmelite Friars arrived in Nottingham in 1276 and readily obtained lands and property. They established a Friary (on what is now Friar Lane) and their lands extended to include the site of what is now The Bell Inn.
By the accurate dating of the building, it’s identification as a hostelry with stables, and it’s location, it is reliably considered that the building was the guesthouse of the Friary. The Bell originally served as a refectory of the Carmelite monastery then sited on Beast market Hill, just below St James Street Junction.
Henry VIII closed small monasteries in 1539 in an effort to tap a valuable source of income, and then it became a secular alehouse, taking it's name from the Angelus bell (Latin word meaning ‘the noon-day bell’) that hung outside the monks’ refectory, which explains how The Bell got its name.
Who’s eldest?
First written evidence of The Bell came in 1638, when Alderman Sherwin passed away, bequeathing his half of the Bell Inn to the poor of the local parishes and this arrangement lasted until August 1888. The first list of Nottingham Inns published in 1758, showed the Bell as one of 120 in the area, of which only 40 still stand today.
Ye Olde Trip to Jerusalem Inn lays claim to being the oldest pub in Britain. This is due mainly to the date of 1189 painted on the side of the Inn. The building itself dates from the 16th or 17th century caves may date to the 11th century and could have been the site of the brew-house for the castle.
Two other Nottingham pubs - Ye Olde Salutation Inn and the Bell Inn - both lay claim to being the oldest in Nottingham. Beams dated in the Salutation are of an old workhouse tannery that was on that site before the pub itself.
Dendrochronology dating evidence from timbers in the Bell Inn gives a date for the building of c.1420.
The roots of the multiple claims can be traced to various subtleties of definition in terms such as "public house" and "inn”.
