The Exmoor Forest Inn
The Exmoor Forest Inn was originally known as the Refreshment House, then from 1885 The William Rufus Inn and then The Exmoor Forest Hotel in 1901. For a while it was split in half with the nearest part to the road being the Temperance Hotel, until re-united in 1909. It was teetotal until 1933 when the parish of Exmoor was granted its excise licence. In 2005 the term ‘Inn’ was reinstated to the name, when the building was renovated.
When known as the William Rufus Inn, it was said to be the haunt of the noted Exmoor Highwayman Tom Faggus, who married ‘Girt Jan Ridds’ sister whose exploits are recorded in ‘Lorna Doone’. Once it was said, Faggus’s enemies laid a trap to catch him in the Inn, but Faggus whistled for his strawberry mare Winnie who jumped through the window and kicked all her masters enemies away from him. Faggus jumped on the mares back and escaped.
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Famous quotes containing the words forest and/or inn:
“The moose will, perhaps, one day become extinct; but how naturally then, when it exists only as a fossil relic, and unseen as that, may the poet or sculptor invent a fabulous animal with similar branching and leafy horns ... to be the inhabitant of such a forest as this!”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“I have had the accomplishment of something like this at heart ever since I was a boy.... So I feel tonight like the man who is lodging happily in the inn which lies half way along the journey and that in time, with a fresh impulse, we shall go the rest of the journey and sleep at the journey’s end like men with a quiet conscience.”
—Woodrow Wilson (1856–1924)