Hob Lane
Stanbury
West Yorkshire
BD22 0HW
01535 647437
The Old Silent Inn sits just outside the Pennine village of Stanbury on the steep hill leading down to the River Worth (photo 1). It dates from the early 1800s, built from the buff-coloured local gritstone and seems to have started life as an inn (photo 2).
It’s a food-led pub popular with diners from both sides of the Pennines, and it serves beers from the Greene King range along with guest beers from local breweries. There are lots of walks in the area and the Pennine Way is only half a mile away so it’s popular with walkers as well. The pub does accommodation and there are eight ensuite bedrooms.
For most of the 19th century the pub was called the Eagle and was popular with farmers and gamekeepers during the grouse shooting season. By Edwardian times it was known as the Silent and after a long period of closure it reopened as the Old Silent in 1965.
The name relates to Bonnie Prince Charlie’s stay at the pub while being pursued by English soldiers, and the silence of supportive locals who refused to betray him. It’s a nice story but sadly Charlie’s flight from the Crown was in Scotland, not Yorkshire, and the pub was built 60 years after the Jacobite Rebellion of 1745.
Like most pubs in Bronte Country the Old Silent Inn is haunted, and several ghosts have made an appearance including an ex-landlady with a bell, a bag-carrying traveller and cats.
