The Scarbrought Hotel (please note the spelling), or Scarbrough Taps as it’s long been known, is one of those public houses with a beautiful tile frontage. Right by the station, it seems to do good business.

All very pleasant. But the site has a longer history than most places it Leeds. It began not long after the Norman Conquest, when the garrison stationed here built their fortress right here, with the sire aptly known as Castyle Hill. It commanded a good view, rised up from the river, easy access to the water, and enough distance from the locals – whose village was on Kirkgate.

Go forward, and it became the Leeds manor house, built by Ralph Paynel after any danger of insurrection had faded. Over the centures it underwent a few rebuilds, and became a very genteel residence in the 1500s, then completely redone in the 1700s. During work around the area, evidence of the moast that had once sat around the old manor house was found.

By the 1820s it was an inn known as the King’s Arms, with Henry Scarbrough as its landlord. Later in the century it was acquired by the man who owned City Varieites Music Hall, and who gave it its new name. He held talent shows upstairs and it became a music hall until the bottom fell out of the business and it reverted to being simply a public house.

Ladies and gentlemen, the Scarbrough Hotel.

I hope you won’t forget that a new book of mine came out in March. None of it is set in the old inn, but it’s good, nonetheless!