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| Sign in 2006 |
The Three Conies was a drovers’ inn providing overnight accommodation for livestock drovers and their stock. Scots Pine trees are often associated with drovers’ inns, supposedly to mark their location for travellers. Old pine trees are still evident in the former accommodation land opposite the inn.
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| Late 1800s |
The property is believed
to date from at least the 17th century; the stone sundial above the former
front door shows the date 1622.
One of the earliest documented references to the property is an advertisement
for the sale of a dwelling in the Northampton
Mercury in September 1738. The 1777 Militia List also refers to the “Thre
Coneys”.
The inn was run by the Linnell family from the 1770s until 1847. Income was
supplemented by farming activities, as with many successor landlords.
Unfortunately it is left to the imagination to picture the inn with its former
thatched roof. A parish meeting held at the inn in 1968 refers to the thatch
on the inn’s outbuildings.They were probably the last thatched buildings
in the village.
A stone mounting block for horse riders stood in the present car park until
well into the 1900s. The Three Conies has hosted many hunt meets and the Bicester
Hunt had sub-kennels attached to the inn. The kennels were in use in the late
1800s.
Prior to 1850, magistrates held meetings at the inn. Later they transferred
to the Dolphin Inn at nearby Middleton Cheney.
The inn has been owned by the Oxfordshire brewery Hook Norton Brewery Co.
Limited since 1920.
(Main photograph: The Warren houses and The Three Conies, 1996)
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