The Saracen’s Head Inn, Stamford: Uncovered?

John Daffurn 2025

A recently posted snippet on this site (see here) identified an unknown medieval inn included in Prof Alan Rogers’ People & Property in Medieval Stamford (838. MB 4/58).  It refers to ‘le Sarsynneshed in the parish of St Mary at the Bridge Stamford’ which was being repaired in 1435. The post resonated with me as other information I had accumulated when researching for Stamford Assets had also identified a Saracen’s Head Inn. Now, with documentary evidence, it is possible to formulate a proposition regarding both the exact location of the inn and the likely date it was built.

1. The Location of the Saracen's Head

1.1       Introduction

Whilst researching for Newcomb owned properties in St Mary’s parish, I came across a group of documents held by the Lincolnshire Archives (LA). Curiously the entry heading in the archive catalogue mentioned that the documents related to a building which was formerly known as the Saracen’s Head. At the time I was unable, before the publication deadline for Stamford Assets, to decipher and unravel the complex group of documents from 1663 to 1850, involving multiple buildings and parcels of land. Having revisited them, I believe it is now possible to identify the location of the inn and its owners and tenants, from 1663.

1.2       1721 Indenture – Gift from Joshua Blackwell to his son, John (LA, MISC DON 1064/6)

The most detailed document in the group is a 1721 indenture setting out the terms of a gift of property in the Monday Market [now St Mary’s Place] from Joshua Blackwell to his son John, in consideration of John’s marriage to Mary Winder. The gifted property included three separate messuages or tenements ‘and all manner of Outhouses Edifices Buildings Dovehouses Barns Stables Coachhouses Yards Orchards Gardens Backsides Ways Waters Watercourses Walls Fences Easements Privileges Profits Commons Emoluments Hereditaments and Appurtenances’.

This indenture also details the families (Fairchild, Kettleborough and Wright) from whom Joshua Blackwell purchased these properties, and this aids the research into the location of the old inn. One of the properties is described as having a ‘malting office’ which links to a property advertised to let in 1723 (see 1.4) and which in 1721 was tenanted by John South and Dr Charles Wilson. South had, in 1719, been the landlord of the Swan Inn [located at 15 St Mary’s Street and later called the Swan and Talbot, and then the Talbot] and was mayor of Stamford in 1722/3. The link between the Swan Inn and the malting house property is replicated in 1795 (see Sarah Broughton in 1.5).

1.3       Additional documents 1663-1721

Although the 1721 indenture does not mention the Saracen’s Head, the five earlier documents below all confirm the inn by name and relate to property acquired by Blackwell from the Fairchild family, and, by inference, the Kettleborough family. These documents all relate to ‘three lower ground rooms’ being ‘part of and belonging to a messuage or tenement called or known by or name of or sign of the Sarisons Head [also Sarizons Head]’.

1.3.1    1663 Indenture, Robert Cammock to Henry Fairchild (LA, MISC DON 1064/1)

The Cammock family were well known in Stamford and had resided in St Mary’s parish since the middle of the 16th century. Robert’s father and his uncle, Edward, had both been aldermen of the Corporation of Stamford and, in 1643, Edward had carried the town mace in front of Charles I when he processed through the town.

Additional information within the indenture states that a tallow chandler, Willian Algar, had occupied the property north of the Saracen’s Head and Robert Cammock also owned the building south of the inn.

In 1661, Robert’s daughter, Sarah, was born and the St Mary’s parish register gives Robert’s occupation as innkeeper. A year later, Robert’s father died and, as a wealthy and important inhabitant of St Mary’s parish, it is likely that he owned both the Saracen’s Head, occupied by his son, and the property next door which was his home. Robert, his eldest son, would have inherited these buildings from his father and one scenario would be that Robert moved into his father’s house and sold or let parts such as the ‘the three lower ground rooms’ of what had become a failing inn.

The indenture also describes the rooms above the lower rooms as being in the possession of William Algar and Robert Cammock. However, by 1672 these upper rooms were owned by Thomas Kettleborough (see 1.3.2)

1.3.2    1672 Indenture, Anne Fairchild to Richard, her son (LA, MISC DON 1064/2)

Anne, the widow of Henry Fairchild who died in 1671, gifted the three lower rooms to her son Richard on his marriage to Susan Nelsy.  At that time the lower rooms were being let to Joseph Parnham, who in 1672 married into the Fairchild family, and the upper rooms were owned by Thomas Kettleborough.

1.3.3    1674 Indenture, Richard Fairchild to Major Fairchild (LA, MISC DON 1064/3)

In 1674, Richard Fairchild leased the three rooms for ‘four score and nyneteene years’ to Major Fairchild, a butcher, who one might assume was a relative.

1.3.4    1698 Quadrupartite Indenture (LA, MISC DON 1064/4)

This document appears to be a tidying up of Joshua Blackwell’s property portfolio in St Mary’s parish, by acquiring the three lower ground rooms, having probably already bought the upper rooms from Thomas Kettleborough, as well as a larger property and land from Robert Wright. However, over seventy years remained on the lease in 1.3.3 above, and as Major Fairchild had died in 1690 his widow Elizabeth and daughter, also Elizabeth, inherited the lease. The four parties to the indenture were the widow and daughter of Major Fairchild, Richard Fairchild and Susan his wife, who owned the freehold, John Rogers [father-in-law of Joshua], who held the property in trust for Joshua Blackwell, and finally Joshua Blackwell himself, who was to purchase the freehold.

1.3.5    1698 Indenture, Richard Fairchild to Joshua Blackwell (LA, MISC DON 1064/5)

This document conveyed the freehold to Joshua Blackwell, having concluded the lease arrangements in 1.3.4 above.

The five documents above, plus the 1721 indenture, do not identify the exact location of the Saracen's Head but provide information which, when taken together wirh 1.4 (the Blackwell family) and 1.5 (documentary evidence from 1772 to 1850) below, clarifies the situation.

1.4       The Blackwell family

Between 1698 and 1721 there is a paucity of documentation to assist in the location quest, but genealogical information can help. In 1686, Joshua Blackwell married Mary Rogers, the daughter of John Rogers, a doctor, who is mentioned in 1.3.4, and they would have needed a marital home. A few years before, probably in 1680, Robert Cammock died and in 1682 his daughter, Sarah, married Robert Wright. Both lived and remained in the parish of All Saints, so it is possible that Sarah inherited her father’s property in St Mary’s and sold it following her marriage, as Robert Wright and Sarah are named in 1721 as being one of the parties from whom Joshua Blackwell acquired property.

The assumption is that Blackwell acquired Robert Cammock’s house and made it his home before buying the upper rooms of the Saracen’s Head from Thomas Kettleborough and the lower rooms from Richard Fairchild. He lived in the house with his wife, Mary, but in 1699, at the age of thirty-two, she died having born him five children, including his son John. In 1702, Joshua, then a widower, married Lettice Winder, a widow, and they continued to live in the same house until his death in 1727 and Lettice’s death in 1730, even though it had been gifted to his son John in 1721. When John married Mary Winder, the daughter of Lettice from her first marriage, Lettice became both his stepmother and mother-in-law.

In 1723, John Blackwell, following the death of Dr Wilson his tenant, advertised the house with the malting office to let (Stamford Mercury [SM], 6 June 1723) and a 1724 advertisement for the same property mentions it having a coach house and stable for seven horses.

After the death of his father and stepmother, John Blackwell demolished his large house and built in its place what is now 2 St Mary's Place. A few years later he extended the house which became 3 St Mary’s Place. One is now able to realise that the location for the Saracen’s Head is the property north of Blackwell's home – 1 St. Mary's Place.

When John Blackwell died in 1770, he left a detailed will bequeathing a house tenanted by Dr Jackson, to Miss Eleanor Peart, and his main residence to his son Thomas Blackwell, the rector of St Clement Danes, London. However, in a subsequent codicil, his will was amended to leave both properties to Peart. Thereafter, the trail of 1 St Mary's Place, and therefore the site of the Saracen's Head, is well documented.

1.5       Documents and other information for 1 St Mary’s Place, 1770 to 1919.

The death of John Blackwell triggered the sale of the building that was previously the Saracen’s Head and from that date documentary evidence exists for the ownership of the property until 1919, when it appeared in an auction catalogue as 1 St Mary’s Place.

Eleanor Peart, the grandniece of John Blackwell, inherited his two houses and proceeded to sell them both. No. 1 St Mary’s Place was sold in 1771 to John Hays (LA, MISC DON 1064/9) for £220, and in 1773 the large house was sold to Edward Nott.

In 1790, Abel Walford Bellairs bought the large property (2/3 St Mary’s Place) and in 1793 bought No. 1 from John Hays for £336. This latter deal appears to be a mechanism to enhance the Bellairs’ larger property next door, as in 1795 he sold it on to Sarah Broughton for £315, after carving out some of the land at the rear. The indenture stated that Bellairs was selling the house ‘except such part of the premises as have been lately taken into the yard and premises of the said Abel Walford Bellairs and then divided therefrom by the fence wall and buildings of and belonging to him the said Abel Walford Bellairs’ (LA, MISC DON 1064/10b).

When Sarah Broughton bought 1 St Mary’s Place, she was still the landlady of the Swan and Talbot Inn (previously the Swan Inn run by John South in 1719). Sarah Broughton retired in 1795 and moved permanently into 1 St Mary’s Place (SM, 17 April 1795).

Over the years 1 St Mary’s Place passed through the heirs of Sarah Broughton until it was bought by Richard Newcomb for £400, in 1850 (LA, MISC DON 1064/12). The complete list of owners and tenants of the building from 1663 until its auction sale in October 1919 can be seen in Appendix A.

2. The Origin of the Saracen’s Head Inn, Stamford

The Oxford Dictionary provides the meaning of Saracen as i. An Arab or Muslim at the time of the Crusades and ii. A nomad of the Syrian or Arabic descent. The ‘Saracen’s Head‘ is described as a heraldic charge or an inn sign, and although many inns named the Saracen’s Head remain in England the word Saracen can now cause offence.

Its use as a name for an inn is almost certainly linked to the Crusades which were a series of wars in the Holy Land from 1096 to 1297. The English did not participate until the 2nd Crusade in 1147 when a few knights ‘took the cross’ [taking vows and joining a crusade] and travelled to Palestine. In 1187, Richard, as the Duke of Pitou, took the cross and later, as Richard I, he led the 3rd Crusade in 1190, with the support of an army of 6,000 Englishmen.

It is known that there was support in Stamford for pilgrims and knights travelling to Jerusalem before 1189, in the form of the house of the Holy Sepulchre, a hospital of the Knights of St. John of Jerusalem, sometimes called Knights Hospitallers. This was situated on the south side of the River Welland on the site of the George Hotel. Elsewhere in England there is evidence of a Saracen’s Head inn existing prior to 1194 as Richard I on his return from the Crusades visited one and renamed it the Royal Saracen’s Head.

It is suggested in the location information above that the Saracen’s Head in Stamford may have been operating until 1663 and from Prof Alan Rogers it is known that the Saracen’s Head was being repaired in 1435 and therefore must have been built prior to that date.

The knights and soldiers from the north of England would have retraced their steps when returning from the Crusade in 1194 and passed through Stamford on their way home. The success of Richard the Lionheart’s campaign in the Holy Land and its subsequent mythologising spread throughout the country, and this may have led to the naming of the Saracen’s Head in St Marys Place, an important area of Stamford adjacent to St Mary’s church.

Finally, the southwest corner of the cellar of 1 St Mary’s Place ‘incorporates part of a 13th-century undercroft’ (Royal Commission on Historical Monuments, The Town of Stamford).  Could this be part of the cellar of the Saracen’s Head or even part of the three lower ground rooms sold to Henry Fairchild in 1663? The Saracen’s Head was built between 1190 and 1435, but with the existence of the undercroft one might err towards the beginning of the 13th century shortly after the return of the Crusaders. 

  Appendix A

Note… Text in italics indicates an assumption

A print copy can be downloaded HERE