Ostrich Inn - Serial Killers At England's Third Oldest Inn

In 1215, King John allegedly stopped for the night at a small hospice on the road to Runnymede, where he would sign the Magna Carta the following day. Eight centuries later, you can sleep in the same building - give or take several reconstructions - order a pint at the bar, and stare at a working model of the contraption a landlord supposedly used to boil 60 guests alive.

The only problem is that not everyone agrees that the landlord ever existed, the murders ever happened, or that the story didn't originate in a novel written four hundred years after the alleged crimes.

Between that founding hospice and the functioning inn of today lies nearly a thousand years of accumulated history, legend, renovation, and reinvention. Kings and outlaws passed through. A novelist turned it into a crime scene. Ghost hunters held conversations with spirits named John. The building kept standing, kept serving, and kept collecting stories - some true, most not, all worth knowing before you check in.

Origins: From Hospice to Coaching Inn

The structure that became The Ostrich Inn began not as a pub but as a place of shelter. In 1106, during the reign of Henry I, a man named Miles Crispin gifted a hospice at Colebrook to Abingdon Abbey. That hospice is believed to have stood on the spot where the inn stands today - which is why so many sources date the establishment to the 12th century, even though the current building was most likely constructed in the 1500s.

The name itself is contested. Four competing explanations exist: that "Ostrich" is a corruption of "Oyster Ridge," that it derives from the French pieds poudreux (meaning dusty-footed, a reference to traveling merchants), that it was originally called the Eastridge Inn, or - most plausibly - that it evolved from the original "Hospice Inn." The giant African bird had nothing to do with it; in medieval England, almost no one had ever seen one.

By the time the current timber-framed building took shape in the 16th century, Colnbrook had become an important waypoint. The village sat on the main coach road from London to Bath, close to Windsor Castle and the royal corridors of power. Wealthy merchants, clothiers, and travelers of all kinds passed through. The inn accommodated them, fed them, and - at least according to one novelist writing in 1598 - occasionally killed them.

The Murder Legend

The story that defines The Ostrich Inn's reputation is older than anyone can verify, and tracing its origins reveals more about the inn than the legend itself does.

In the late 16th century, a Norfolk silk-weaver and writer named Thomas Deloney published a novel called Thomas of Reading. His last work before his death in 1600, it told the story of a wealthy clothier from Reading who stops for the night at a Berkshire inn called The Crane, run by a landlord named Jarman.

Deloney's Jarman had engineered a special room above the kitchen: the bed was built over a trapdoor, which when triggered would drop a sleeping guest directly into a cauldron of boiling water below. Jarman's signal to his wife that a suitable victim had arrived was to announce that "there is now a fat pig to be had" - she would reply that he should "put him in the hogsty till tomorrow."

The scheme finally unraveled when Thomas Cole, a prominent clothier and the novel's hero, was murdered - but his horse escaped the stable and was found wandering the village, prompting an investigation that led back to The Crane.

The novel was a bestseller. It went through multiple editions and was still in circulation in the 1680s. A shortened illustrated version was produced for a more popular audience, dedicated to the Worshipful Company of Clothworkers.

Deloney's purpose was hagiographic rather than historical - he was creating a martyr for the cloth trade, embedding the industry in the deep roots of English legend much the way monks had invented saints. The murders, the boiling cauldron, the 60 victims Jarman supposedly confessed to before his hanging: all fictional.

No contemporary sources record any murders at the inn. No record exists of any Jarman being tried or executed. Scholars have noted this for centuries - the historian Thomas Fuller, writing in 1662, said he "vehemently suspected very little of truth would remain in the midst of this story, if the gross falsehoods were pared from both sides thereof."

And yet. One 19th-century account, predating modern media credulity, suggests Deloney may have been working from genuine local folklore rather than pure invention. A tradition recorded in 1829 describes 13 murdered bodies being removed from an inn in the area during the reign of Edward I (1272-1307), their disposal in the Thames, and the disputed burial of one corpse that led to a longstanding land disagreement between neighboring parishes. Whether Deloney heard a version of this story and embellished it beyond recognition, or whether the folklore itself was inspired by his novel, is impossible to determine.

What's certain is that the story attached itself permanently to The Ostrich - and that the pub has leaned into it ever since. A working model of the murderous bed mechanism is on display to this day.

Dick Turpin, King John, and the Question of What's True

The inn collects legends the way old buildings collect drafts, and not all of them are fictional.

The claim that King John rested here on his way to Runnymede in 1215 is unverifiable but plausible - the inn sat directly on the route he would have traveled, and a hospice of that size and location would have been a natural stopping point for a traveling royal party. Whether he slept in the building or merely passed through, no document confirms.

Dick Turpin's connection is similarly uncertain. Turpin (1705-1739) was a real English highwayman - burglar, horse thief, poacher, killer - who was eventually caught stealing horses and hanged. Colnbrook, with its toll house and busy coach road, was exactly the kind of place a highway criminal would have operated.

The story that Turpin used the inn as a hideout and escaped Bow Street Runners by jumping from a window is consistent with the geography and the era, if unconfirmed by any record. His eventual fate - captured, sentenced, hanged - is well-documented history.

What the inn offers, then, is a building old enough that most of these stories are at least structurally possible. The original hospice dates to 1106. The current structure to the 1500s. Kings, criminals, and clothiers all moved through this corridor of England for centuries. The Ostrich was there for all of it, even if it didn't always keep notes.

The Building Today: Beams, Fires, and a Functioning Bar

Walking into The Ostrich Inn today, the age of the place announces itself immediately. Original timber beams cross the low ceilings. Fireplaces anchor the main rooms. The floors are uneven in the way that only genuinely old floors are - not affectedly rustic, but authentically worn. A cobbled courtyard sits outside. The crooked staircase leads upstairs the way crooked staircases have been leading people upstairs for five centuries.

The pub operates as a traditional English inn: a bar, a restaurant, and rooms above - the same arrangement, more or less, that travelers would have found here in the 1600s. The main difference is the menu.

The kitchen takes pub classics seriously without overcomplicating them. Starters include a Scotch egg made with sausage meat and black pudding, squid rings with tartare sauce, creamy wild mushrooms on toast with blue cheese crumble, and hot honey halloumi fingers. The sharers - baked camembert with garlic and rosemary, loaded nachos, a mezze board - work well for groups settling in by the fire.

Main courses lean into the British tradition without being stuck in it. The fish and chips uses local ale batter, served with minted pea purée. The Jarman's Pie - named, with some dark humor, after the inn's fictional murderer - is the chef's meat pie of the day in puff pastry with creamy mash and seasonal vegetables.

A rack of BBQ ribs, an 8 oz sirloin, a seabream fillet with shallot-caper-garlic butter, and a mushroom and truffle risotto fill out a menu that covers carnivores, pescatarians, and vegetarians without making any of them feel like an afterthought.

The Rooms: Six Ways to Sleep in a Building That Has Seen Everything

The Ostrich has 13 rooms spread across six categories. They range from a converted grand function room with a four-poster bed to a self-contained apartment that could comfortably fit a family. None of them are identical, and the older the room, the more character it carries.

The Standard Double is the smallest option at 12 m² (129 sq ft), located on the ground floor.

The Superior Double/Twin sits on the ground floor in a 20 m² (215 sq ft) en-suite room. The Superior Double on the first floor offers the same footprint with slightly different positioning and a shower rather than a bath. Both are comfortable, unfussy rooms for a night or two.

The Feature Room occupies the first floor and offers a freestanding bath inside the room alongside an en-suite toilet - an unusual combination that makes it the right pick for a special occasion without the full extravagance of the King John Suite. A king bed, sofa bed, and rollaway bed accommodate up to four across 25 m² (269 sq ft).

The Ostrich Nest is the inn's newest offering - a fully serviced apartment with a separate living room, kitchen, and bathroom. Three double beds (including a sofa bed) sleep up to six across 75 m² (807 sq ft). It's the practical choice for families or groups who want to stay in a 900-year-old building without giving up the option of making their own breakfast.

The King John Suite is the showpiece. Once used as a grand function room, it has been converted into a suite with a handcrafted four-poster bed, a copper roll-top bath, exposed original beams, and a feature fireplace. A dressing area with vintage-style vanity and a walk-in shower round out a space that manages to feel genuinely historic rather than merely themed. It sleeps four and measures 51.7 m² (556 sq ft).

The Ghosts

No article about The Ostrich would be honest without mentioning the hauntings - or rather, the reports of them. Staff and guests have described cold spots in the restaurant area near the room where the fictional murders took place, unexplained noises, and objects moving without explanation. The apparition of a woman in a Victorian dress has been reported, as has that of a young girl. Paranormal investigators who visited in 2003 claimed to have held a conversation with a spirit named John.

Whether any of this reflects genuine supernatural activity or the natural tendency of old buildings to produce strange sounds, uneven temperatures, and overactive imaginations in people who know too much of the building's history is a question The Ostrich is content to leave unanswered. The mirrors stay on the walls. The bar stays open. The model of the murder bed sits where visitors can find it.

The inn is listed as one of England's third-oldest pubs, located in the quiet village of Colnbrook, roughly 17 km (11 miles) from central London and minutes from Heathrow Airport. It has survived nearly a thousand years of English history: plague, civil war, industrialization, motorways, and the invention of budget hotels. The Jarmans never existed. King John probably slept nearby. Dick Turpin may or may not have jumped out of a window. The building is still here, still serving, still collecting stories.

That seems like enough.