The Griffin Amersham 1791
Two hundred and thirty-five years on The Broadway, and the walls still aren’t talking.
Strictly speaking, we are older than that. The timber frame behind our Georgian brick has stood here since the fifteen-hundreds at least, on the line of what may well have been a Roman road — there is still a prehistoric marker stone in our courtyard, for anyone who wants to check our references. But 1791 is the year the Griffin Club, a local friendly society, first sat down to dinner here and enjoyed it so much they are, remarkably, still going. A dinner that runs for two hundred and thirty-five years struck us as the right sort of precedent, so that is the year we count from.
The values have not moved an inch since: bring people together, look after them properly, back the locals — and keep whatever we overhear behind the bar.
We were once one of Amersham’s three great coaching inns — known in our earliest days as the Wyvern, before somebody sensible intervened. Oliver Cromwell called in for refreshment in 1645 on his way to negotiate with the King’s men, and his troops were said to have slept in our stable yard. A notice above the restaurant fireplace long read: “Cromwell dined here and won the Civil War — King Charles dined at the opposition and lost his head.” We make no guarantees about your own affairs, but the record speaks for itself.
By the 1720s our nine bedrooms had names — the Talbot, the Chequer, the Moon, the Crown, the Griffin, the Princess Arms, the Rose, the Sun and the Star — and the cellar held hogsheads of red port and Canary wine. The squires of Shardeloes ran their election campaigns from our parlour; their bar bill for the 1790 election came to £88 9s 4d, about £7,000 today, plus a guinea for the band. Democracy has always been thirsty work.
Not every landlord covered himself in glory. In 1774 our innkeeper — also the town’s Deputy Postmaster — was found helping himself to the bank notes in the mail. He fled with fifty pounds on his head, the wanted notice describing him as “very fat”, in “a black curled wig with a Tyburn top”, and was caught at Dunkirk. We have kept the hospitality and postal trades separate ever since.
Over the years The Griffin has become the local bolthole — the sort of place you drop into for one drink and leave rather later, having agreed to something. Benjamin Disraeli dined here with the market farmers in 1847. The artist Whistler lunched here in 1900 and left his verdict in the visitors’ book — “The old house charming; the kitchen amazing” — signed with his butterfly. The Victorian cycling clubs made us their official touring headquarters and filled that same book with doggerel: “When hungry, cold, and dry, Berry’s Griffin try.” We hold the kitchen to Whistler’s standard. The poetry we let slide.
The walls themselves have kept a few things back. Renovations in 1922 uncovered a great fireplace dated 1700, a hidden recess high up the chimney, whispers of a secret passage through the second floor — and an underground chamber so like a small chapel that a lost monastery was solemnly reported in the press. It turned out, almost certainly, to be the old wine cellar. Which tells you everything about what this house has always considered sacred. The proprietors of that era, a decorated Flying Corps captain and his business partner Mrs Blackmore, shared a flat in Paddington and were “occasionally referred to” as married. We referred to nothing. That is rather the point of us.
Discretion, in fact, is a house tradition with form. When Scotland Yard came calling in 1952 about a missing widow and some trunks once stored on the premises, we could tell them honestly that we knew nothing — the mystery was never solved, and we bring it up only to prove the discretion is genuine. And when fire broke out in 1965, the alarm was raised by the managers’ dog, Brandy, sparing the Griffin far worse — the only occasion on record of drink saving a pub.
Our award-winning restaurant and bar keeps up an exquisite, seasonal and constantly evolving menu, bringing casual fine dining to Old Amersham — and giving the town something to talk about over pudding. It is a habit of long standing: this house has fed royalty’s physicians, monocled celebrity cellists, staghound huntsmen, railway directors and at least one fugitive, and the kitchen has been reviewed by everyone from touring clergymen to Whistler. We remain, as one 1891 guest put it, the place to try when hungry, cold and dry.
The members’ club carries on a habit begun when the Griffin Club first dined here in 1791 — now a snug co-working club: handsome rooms, good light, and the sort of company that makes an afternoon’s work feel like an excellent excuse. You will be neither the first person to do serious business in these rooms, nor the most heavily investigated.
Our event spaces have seen a great deal. Weddings and wakes, birthday parties and baby showers, election victories, railway openings that ended in song at eleven o’clock — and a fair number of evenings nobody has ever fully accounted for. We are just as at home with the respectable end of things: awards evenings, networking drinks, speaker sessions. We bring the personality and the flair. What happens after the last slide is between you and the bar.
Nestled in the heart of Old Amersham, surrounded by history and handsome Georgian frontages, The Griffin is a fine place to eat, meet, work and misbehave gently in an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty.
Our team is a close-knit sort of family — the kind that remembers your usual, your birthday, and precisely what you said last time. For nearly three decades in the 1800s the inn was run by Ann Jones and then her daughter Fanny — innkeepers, farmers of 160 acres, and proof that this house has been in formidable hands for longer than most institutions would care to admit.
Whatever you are after, you are always welcome here. Two hundred and thirty-five years of practice. Discretion included.
A few moments from the record
- c.1500s
- A timber-framed inn stands on The Broadway, on the line of an ancient road. A prehistoric marker stone still sits in the courtyard.
- 1645
- Cromwell calls in for refreshment; his troops bed down in the stable yard.
- 1724
- The inventory lists nine named bedrooms, a gallery with a Spanish table, and a cellar of port and Canary wine. The squire’s tab: £17 19s 5d — about £2,000 today.
- 1737
- Advertised to let: two kitchens, two parlours, a bar, a brewhouse, stabling for gentlemen’s horses. Two stage-coaches pass daily.
- 1759
- The county militia is balloted here, under the founder of the Hellfire Club.
- 1774
- Our innkeeper-postmaster absconds with the contents of the mail. Caught at Dunkirk.
- 1791
- The Griffin Club dines here for the first time. It still exists. So do we.
- 1847
- Benjamin Disraeli dines with the farmers of Amersham market.
- 1890
- Official headquarters of the Cyclists’ Touring Club, “by appointment”.
- 1892
- The railway reaches Amersham; the celebration dinner is held here, with songs until eleven.
- 1900
- Whistler lunches, and signs the visitors’ book: “The old house charming; the kitchen amazing.”
- 1922
- Renovations reveal a hidden chimney recess, a rumoured secret passage, and a “monastery chapel” that proves to be the wine cellar.
- 1920s
- The motor age: a petrol pump at the front door, selling Pratt’s Golden, and “Ye Olde Griffin Garage” out the back.
- 1952
- Scotland Yard investigates some trunks once stored here. We say nothing. There is nothing to say.
- 1965
- Brandy the dog raises the alarm, sparing the Griffin the worst of a fire.
- 1983
- Named among the “Best of British” pubs.
- Today
- Restaurant, bar, members’ club, event rooms. Still serving. Still not talking.
Somewhere to misbehave quietly, since 1791
Book a table and add to the stories, or tell us what you’re plotting and we’ll find you the right room for it.