Six centuries on the High Street
For more than six hundred years, Bull has stood on Burford High Street. Each century has changed it, and each has left something behind.
Medieval timber, a Georgian face and a long life as the town's meeting place. Here is how a timber-framed house became a coaching inn, and the hotel it is today.
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Medieval
The first house
Traces of the earliest building survive today. Bull's heavy timber posts date from the medieval period, when the house stood on a timber frame rather than stone walls. Along the carriageway, the first-floor gallery was once open to the air: instead of corridors, people reached the rooms above by an outdoor wooden walkway.
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1539
A butcher's tenancy
The layout would have suited an inn, but Bull wasn't one yet. In 1539 the tenant was a butcher, and records show the building stayed in everyday domestic and commercial use for years to come.
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1600s
An inn on the coaching road
By the seventeenth century Burford was one of the wealthiest towns in England, made rich by the wool trade and by its place on the main coaching road linking London and Oxford with the Cotswolds and the west. As merchants and travellers came through in growing numbers, Bull became an inn and began its long life of looking after people on the move.
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1700s
The heart of the town
Bull's rooms belonged to the town as much as to its guests. Meetings and auctions, assemblies and balls, even travelling theatre companies all found a stage at Bull.
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1758
Reopening the great room
Smallpox swept through Burford, and more than two hundred townspeople were buried in three summer months. When the worst had passed, Bull was among the first places to reopen its great room for assemblies and balls: a small act that said a great deal about its place in the town.
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Late 1700s
A new face on the High Street
Racing at the nearby Bibury and Burford racecourse drew fashionable crowds, and coaches rolled in through the carriageway day and night. Around this time Bull gained its brick frontage. In a High Street built of stone, brick was expensive and modern, and a clear sign that Bull was prosperous and ready for more cosmopolitan visitors.
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1797
Fire in the stables
One February night a candle caught the straw in the stables, and the coaching buildings were lost before help could arrive. The fire moved the town to raise money for its first fire engine. The stables were rebuilt, and the coaches kept coming.
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1800s
New kinds of traveller
As the coaching age faded, Bull adapted again: first for farmers and market traders, then for cyclists touring the countryside. By the turn of the twentieth century it advertised billiards and cycling facilities, and before long a motor garage, as the photograph at the top of this page shows.
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1982
Saved and restored
In the early hours of a July morning, a passing driver noticed smoke curling from the roof. A major firefighting effort saved the building, and it was carefully restored.
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Today
Bull now
Bull wears its history lightly. Medieval timber, Georgian confidence and modern comfort sit side by side, shaped by six centuries of visitors.
Look for it
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The timber posts
You'll find them in the courtyard: medieval timbers that once held the whole house up.
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The gallery
It runs above the carriageway as you come in from the High Street. Once an open-air walkway to the rooms.
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The brick frontage
Best seen from across the High Street. The Georgian face that set Bull apart from its stone neighbours.
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The mounting block
It still stands at the foot of the carriageway, where riders once climbed into the saddle and carriages waited.