Warren House Inn

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The Warren House Inn is a remote and isolated public house in the heart of Dartmoor, United Kingdom. It is the highest pub in southern England (1,425ft above sea level).

It is located on an ancient road across the moor, close to the village of Postbridge and has been a stopping point for travellers for centuries. It would also have been used by miners from the nearby Vitifer and Golden Dagger tin mines, in their heyday in the 18th century but now long abandoned.

Today's building dates back to 1845, but the original inn was situated on the opposite side of the road, as confirmed by a map dated 1765. The earliest landlord recorded is William Tapper, in 1786. One of the better known was the self styled Dartmoor Poet, Jonas Coaker, born in Postbridge in 1801.

The Inn is the subject of much folklore - probably exaggerated over the generations. For example, one traveller is said to have stayed there overnight and found a body in a chest in his room. When he mentioned this to the landlord, he was told: "Tis Father, he died t’other day and us couldn’ take to be buried, so mother salted ‘n in so he’ll keep till us can get him buried proper."

Another relates to a visitor who was persuaded to buy a flock of sheep, after consuming copious quantities of cider. The following morning he discovered that the ‘flock’ that he’d been shown by the locals that night was actually the prehistoric stone circles of Grey Wethers.

The fire in the hearth, it is rumoured, has never been allowed to go out and has itself become part of the folklore of the inn. It is said that when the inn was rebuilt, the glowing embers of the fire were carried across the road on a shovel to the new hearth.