South Luffenham - The Inns

The Inns

Various businesses have been conducted at the Boot and Shoe Inn, a shoemakers business in the mid 19th century, which ceased around 1900, giving the inn its name. A coal business was also carried on from the inn, and the village bakehouse was on the west corner of the building, Mr Chard being the last baker until the 1950s. Villagers brought joints of meat and batter for Yorkshire puddings here on Sundays, and these were cooked in the bake oven for twopence a time up until 1935. The chamber for the flour for bread-making was sited above the ovens to keep it warm and dry, and 10-stone bags of flour from Luffenham Mills were hauled up on a wooden ladder.

The Halfway House inn was so called as it was an ostler house at the midpoint for stages. In 1814, the ‘Lord Wellington Accommodation Coach’ ran from Birmingham via Leicester and through South Luffenham at 10 am daily and connected at Stamford with the ‘Lord Welling Coach’ for travellers on to Norwich. The ‘Leicester Coach’ passed through at 3 pm on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays from Stamford. The pub was extended and renamed the Coach House in the 1990s .

The former post office was once two cottages; in the part that was later the shop lived George Hippey, a platelayer. He fell foul of the landlord and one day threw paraffin under the front door, hastily followed by a lighted match.