The Black Horse Inn is a traditional English pub in the beautiful South Downs village of Amberley. In the centre of this historic village lies the Black Horse Inn, which has been trading since the 17th century. If you visit and look closely you can feel and see all the fascinating history of this local village pub.

Starting with the name of the Inn, the Black Horse. This is linked in history to the legendary black horse cavalry of King Alfred. The name was adopted for ancient beer houses to commemorate the exploits of this fearsome cavalry unit in Anglo-Saxon battles. If you plot the location of public houses with this name, you will notice that they are only in particular areas, near to known Anglo-Saxon battles!

Look closely at the building. Originally a row of cottages and a farm out-building, the Black Horse Inn started as a Beer House in the 17th Century in one cottage and gradually expanded. Although the building is now connected, locals can still remember when you had to go outside to move between the different parts of the pub. The function hall has been a part of the village for many years and has been the scene of many a village dance night or celebration. Today it is home to the Amberley Folk Club, a celebration of folk music that has lasted over 50 years.

Step inside to view the local history, hanging from the ceiling is a collection of sheep bells from the last South Downs shepherd, ‘The sheep-bells and the ship-bells ring’. Old pictures and documents remind us of a poorer farming past which relied on the reeds in the brooks. Deeds show that every village cottage used to own a plot of land on the brooks, including The Black Horse Inn. A scratching on an old glass window is the romantic work of a young local demonstrating the authenticity of a diamond engagement ring before he went to war in 1944!

And listen to those locals who have lived in the village for all their lives and can remember the significant changes to the village and its pub, the time when the pub cellar was full of rabbits and pelts (returned for a small refund). When a door swings open with nobody there, they call out ‘come on in Mrs Johnson’….Mrs Johnson was the land lady of the Black Horse Inn from the 1890s to the late 1940s!