👻 HAUNTED PLACE · EXP. Nº0482
ACTIVE
Punch Bowl Inn
Punch Bowl Inn is a location reputed to be haunted in Lancashire, GB. Its reputation comes from reported apparitions, unexplained phenomena and eyewitness accounts gathered over time.
Where is Punch Bowl Inn?
- Location
- Lancashire, GB
- Type
- Other
- Coordinates
- 53.836, -2.497
- Testimonies
- 0
- Last updated
LOCATION
Why is Punch Bowl Inn said to be haunted?
The Punch Bowl Inn stood on Longridge Road at Hurst Green, in Lancashire's Ribble Valley, until 16 June 2021, when it was flattened in a single day without listed building consent. Historic England had put it on the National Heritage List on 22 November 1983 as entry 1146901, recording "A public house with 1793 R E plaque above the door". The pub had closed in 2012 and stood empty. Its ghost was Ned King, a highwayman said to have ridden into the village with Dick Turpin in 1738 and to have been hanged outside the door in 1741. The oldest telling that can be dated is from 1980, in Terence Whitaker's Lancashire's Ghosts and Legends, and the building's own datestone is fifty-two years younger than the hanging it commemorates. What is documented in full is the demolition: an enforcement notice, a dismissed appeal, five convictions at Burnley magistrates court and High Court proceedings, all of them ordering the inn rebuilt to its former state. Nothing has been rebuilt.
What is the history of Punch Bowl Inn?
Historic England added the Punch Bowl Inn to the National Heritage List for England on 22 November 1983, as list entry 1146901, under the statutory address "PUNCH BOWL INN, LONGRIDGE ROAD" and the national grid reference SD 67396 37863. The description written then is the closest thing the building has to a birth certificate: "A public house with 1793 R E plaque above the door with mid-nineteenth century addition to the east. Possibly originally a pair of cottages with a barn to the west now converted to form part of the pub." It records "Squared watershot sandstone with slate roof", two storeys, sashed windows with glazing bars in plain stone surrounds, and two central plain stone door surrounds, the right-hand one blocked. Watershot walling tilts each course slightly outward to throw off rain and is a Pennine mason's habit; the inspector who later heard the enforcement appeal listed "the external watershot sandstone, eighteenth century proportions and the arrangement of fenestration" among the features of particular historic and architectural interest.
The name on the sign changed twice. A heritage statement by C. J. O'Flaherty, submitted to Ribble Valley Borough Council with the 2018 holiday-let application and summarised in the Lancashire Post, traced the pub back to "a row of three single cottages built in 1793", recorded that by 1844 the building was known as the Fenton Arms after Joseph Fenton, who had bought local manors in 1831, and that by 1910 it had become the Punchbowl Inn. The building carried the name Punch Bowl for roughly the last century of its life.
Trade ended in 2012. The Lancashire Telegraph advertised the empty pub on 31 March 2015 at £325,000 and quoted the Ribble Valley MP Nigel Evans: "It's quite miserable every time I drive past it to see what was a very popular pub in such a state." Lead flashing was stripped from the roof, fires were set inside, and the interior had decayed so far that parts of it could not be reached by the surveyor who prepared the 2018 heritage statement. In October 2018 Donelan Trading Ltd, of Whalley Road, Wilpshire, obtained permission to convert the inn into five holiday lets with a café and to lay out a fifteen-unit static caravan park on the site. In March 2020 the council refused a further application to remove the unsafe roof and replace it with new trusses and slate.
On 16 June 2021 the building came down in a single day. A resident told the Lancashire Post: "I went past in the morning and it was there and I drove back in the evening and it had gone." Katherine Turner, of Stonyhurst, had seen the digger arrive the day before: "It's so sad. It has always been a part of village life." Councillor Alison Brown, then chair of the borough's planning committee, said "It is very sad to see such an old building go - our officers are looking in to the matter", and Historic England replied that "We are saddened to hear reports that the Grade II listed Punch Bowl Inn has been demolished without consent, and we will be investigating this with our regional partners."
The council issued a listed building enforcement notice on 1 March 2022 requiring the owners to "restore the building to its former state, as detailed in the attached existing elevation drawings and in the location shown on the attached location plan", allowing twelve calendar months to comply. Andrew Donelan of Donelan Trading appealed on grounds (d), (g) and (j). After five defendants were convicted at Burnley magistrates court on 6 December 2022 he dropped ground (d), and inspector A A Phillips dismissed what was left on 3 March 2023. The appellant had argued that during the demolition "all the materials were destroyed and could not be reused"; Phillips answered that "Clearly, this is incorrect because at my site inspection I observed very large piles of stonework from the demolition on site." He upheld the notice with three added conditions on salvage and materials, and awarded the council a full costs order, finding "unreasonable behaviour resulting in unnecessary or wasted expense".
Timeline: the documented record of Punch Bowl Inn
- 7 April 1739 Richard Turpin is hanged at York. The Newgate Calendar's life of him, the account that made him famous, has Turpin himself shoot his associate King in Whitechapel two years earlier, and never places either man in Lancashire.
- 1793 The datestone above the door reads "1793 R E". It is the only date carved on the building, and the statutory list entry records no earlier fabric.
- By 1844 The building trades as the Fenton Arms, named for Joseph Fenton, who had bought manors in the area in 1831. The name Punch Bowl Inn is in use by 1910, according to the heritage statement by C. J. O'Flaherty lodged with the council in 2018.
- 1980 Terence W. Whitaker prints the earliest datable telling of the Ned King story, in Lancashire's Ghosts and Legends. His King "was never brought to trial but was hanged from a gibbet not far from the front door of the old inn".
- 22 November 1983 The inn is listed Grade II as entry 1146901, statutory address "PUNCH BOWL INN, LONGRIDGE ROAD". The listing is what later makes the demolition a criminal offence.
- 2006 Jason Karl publishes the only account with a named informant inside the pub: the landlady Susan Burke, who told him "she has often felt as if she was being watched from the corner of the kitchen".
- 2012 The pub closes and stands empty. Lead flashing is stripped from the roof and fires are set inside over the following years.
- 16 June 2021 The building is demolished in a day without listed building consent. Historic England says it is "saddened to hear reports that the Grade II listed Punch Bowl Inn has been demolished without consent".
- 1 March 2022 Ribble Valley Borough Council issues a listed building enforcement notice requiring the owners to "restore the building to its former state" within twelve calendar months.
- 3 March 2023 Inspector A A Phillips dismisses the appeal and records the outcome as "Notice varied and upheld", adding conditions on salvage, and awards the council its full costs for "unreasonable behaviour resulting in unnecessary or wasted expense".
- March 2023 Andrew Donelan, Nicola Donelan, Rebecca Donelan, David Cotterell and Brian Ingleby are ordered to pay a combined £70,000 in fines and court costs. District Judge Alex Boyd said the purpose of the requirements was "to protect the building for current and future generations to enjoy"; rebuilding was costed by the developers at £1.5m.
- 15 November 2024 The council approves application 3/2024/0188, the details of alternative materials required by the varied notice. It remains the most recent entry on the planning portal for the site.
- 12 August 2025 A three-month extension granted in May expires with no contractor found for the rebuild, and the council prepares to return to the High Court.
Is there a rational explanation for Punch Bowl Inn?
The ghost of the Punch Bowl has a name, and the name is what carries the story. Ned King is said to have ridden into Hurst Green with Dick Turpin in 1738, to have worked the roads from the inn with the help of the landlord, and to have been hanged in 1741 within sight of the front door. The oldest printed telling that can be dated is Terence W. Whitaker's Lancashire's Ghosts and Legends, published by Robert Hale in 1980, where King "was never brought to trial but was hanged from a gibbet not far from the front door of the old inn". Whitaker returned to the story in Haunted England in 1987 and dated it himself: "For well over 150 years the ghost of Ned King has haunted both the Punch Bowl Inn and the area around Hurst Green." A hanging in 1741 would have given him 246 years by then.
The Victorian record is empty. John Harland and T. T. Wilkinson's Lancashire Folk-Lore of 1867, the standard nineteenth-century compilation for the county, runs to 99,836 words and contains "Ned King" 0 times, "Punch Bowl" 0, "Hurst Green" 0, "highwayman" 0 and "Turpin" 0. The same file returns "ghost" 39 times, "Ribble" 8 and "Clitheroe" 4, so the absence is in the book rather than in the search.
The dates inside the legend also pull against each other. The building's own datestone reads 1793, and Jason Karl's Haunted Places of Lancashire opens its entry with "This attractive country pub, dating back to 1793" - fifty-two years after the hanging the story requires, and the listing records no earlier fabric. The sign said Fenton Arms until about 1910. As for Turpin, the account that made him famous, the Newgate Calendar's life of Richard Turpin, has him shoot his own associate King in Red Lion Street, Whitechapel: King "cried out, 'Shoot him, or we are taken'; on which Turpin fired, and shot his companion, who called out, 'Dick, you have killed me'", and "King lived a week after this affair". Turpin himself was hanged at York on 7 April 1739, two years before the Lancashire execution. That narrative, 4,927 words long, mentions "King" 16 times and "York" 11, and mentions "Lancashire" 0 times and "1741" 0. Whitaker knew the difficulty and wrote it out on the same page as Ned King: "Legend has made more of Dick Turpin than there really was."
The printed versions disagree with one another about the one event they all describe. Whitaker has King hanged without trial; John Dixon's walking guide to the Forest of Bowland has him "displayed upon the gibbot having been tried"; the Lancashire Telegraph has him "captured by the army and hanged from a tree outside the pub" with the landlord named Jonathan Brisco, while the version that circulates online calls the landlord John Briscoe and adds grenadiers, a horse called Black Tarquin and an exorcism in 1942.
Money has been attached to the story for a long time. Simon Entwistle, quoted as a "supernatural expert and historian" in that 2015 sale article, runs Top Hat Tours from Clitheroe in Victorian costume; the Ned King material is part of his repertoire, at £5 an adult and £2.50 a child, and the Punch Bowl had already been worked into commercial haunted-pub tours alongside the Lower Buck at Waddington, the Sun Inn at Chipping and the DeLacy Arms at Whalley. The paperwork that decided the building's fate keeps clear of all of it: the appeal decision and the costs decision of 3 March 2023 run to 2,985 words between them and contain "ghost", "haunt", "spectre", "highwayman", "Turpin" and "paranormal" 0 times each, against "building" 43, "restore" 12 and "demolition" 9.
What is attested, and attributed to a named person, is smaller and quieter. Susan Burke, the landlady, showed Jason Karl round the inn in the years before it closed and told him that "she has often felt as if she was being watched from the corner of the kitchen"; Karl left with "images of Ned King, the young girl and the gentleman scribe", three presences rather than one. Liz Linahan's The North of England Ghost Trail of 1997 reports two, "one she believed to be that of Ned King, the other she declared was female, possibly King's long-dead sweetheart". Ken Howarth's Ghosts, Traditions and Legends of Old Lancashire of 1993 records "moanings and knockings in the Inn, all attributed to Ned King, the highwayman".
Can you visit Punch Bowl Inn?
There is no pub. The plot sits on Longridge Road at Hurst Green, postcode BB7 9QW, on the B6243 between Clitheroe and Longridge, about 7.9 km (4.9 miles) south-west of Clitheroe town centre; the national grid reference on the list entry is SD 67396 37863. The appeal inspector described the site in February 2023 as "located in the open countryside and directly adjacent to the boundary of the Forest of Bowland Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty", with the front elevation of the lost building facing "directly onto the adjacent highway". The land is private and the stone from the demolition is held on it under a condition of the enforcement notice, so the view is from the public road.
The listing survived the building. The National Heritage List entry 1146901 still showed "Date first listed: 22-Nov-1983" and no revocation when the page was captured on 3 January 2026, which is why the enforcement machinery still has something to enforce.
The whole file is free to read online. The appeal decision and the costs decision, both signed by inspector A A Phillips on 3 March 2023, are attached to case APP/Q2371/F/22/3296097 on the Planning Inspectorate's Appeals Casework Portal, and the outcome is recorded there as "Notice varied and upheld". Ribble Valley Borough Council's planning portal holds twenty-four applications under the address "Former Punch Bowl Inn Longridge Road Hurst Green BB7 9QW". Two of them discharged the pre-commencement conditions the inspector added: 3/2023/0454, the survey of on-site materials, approved on 11 December 2023 with an "Available Stone Report July 2023" and a "Material Sorting Report" on file, and 3/2024/0188, the details of alternative materials, approved on 15 November 2024. Searched on 9 September 2026, that portal listed nothing more recent for the site, so the last recorded step is the approval of the materials rather than any rebuilding.
The council began High Court proceedings on 9 August 2024 seeking an injunction against Donelan Trading Limited, Andrew Richard Donelan and Nicola Donelan, and its announcement warned that "failure to comply with a High Court injunction requiring it to be rebuilt may amount to contempt of court". The BBC reported on 15 August 2025 that a further three-month extension granted in May 2025 had expired without a contractor being found. The council's planning department can be reached on 01200 425111. Hurst Green itself is a working village, with Stonyhurst College at its edge, and the walk that John Dixon's Forest of Bowland guide builds around the site takes in "the site of the old gibbet".
Sources consulted
- Historic England, «Punch Bowl Inn, Aighton, Bailey and Chaigley (list entry 1146901)» — National Heritage List for England, 1983 archive
- A A Phillips, Inspector, «Appeal Decision APP/Q2371/F/22/3296097, Punch Bowl Inn, Longridge Road, Hurst Green BB7 9QW» — The Planning Inspectorate, 2023 report
- A A Phillips, Inspector, «Costs Decision APP/Q2371/F/22/3296097 (full award against Mr Andrew Donelan)» — The Planning Inspectorate, 2023 report
- Fiona Finch, «Surprise demolition of Lancashire's famous "most haunted" listed building the Punch Bowl Inn» — Lancashire Post, 2021 newspaper archive
- Lancashire Telegraph, «FOR SALE: 18th century pub where Dick Turpin stayed up for £325k» — Lancashire Telegraph, 2015 newspaper archive
- Lancashire Post, «Historic "haunted" former Punch Bowl Inn gets new lease of life as holiday lets (heritage statement by C. J. O'Flaherty)» — Lancashire Post, 2018 newspaper archive
- Robyn Vinter, «Developers who destroyed historic Lancashire pub ordered to rebuild it» — The Guardian, 2023 newspaper archive
- Ribble Valley Borough Council, «Council launches High Court action over illegally demolished historic pub» — Ribble Valley Borough Council, 2024 report
- Gina Millson, «Council to return to court over future of demolished pub» — BBC News, 2025 newspaper archive
- Terence W. Whitaker, «Lancashire's Ghosts and Legends, p. 196» — London: Robert Hale, 1980 book
- Terence W. Whitaker, «Haunted England: royal spirits, castle ghosts, phantom coaches & wailing ghouls, p. 234» — Chicago: Contemporary Books, 1987 book
- Jason Karl, «Haunted Places of Lancashire: on the trail of the paranormal, pp. 50-52» — Newbury: Countryside Books, 2006 book
- Liz Linahan, «The North of England Ghost Trail, p. 208» — London: Constable, 1997 book
- John Harland and T. T. Wilkinson, «Lancashire Folk-Lore (measured for absence: 99,836 words, "Ned King" 0, "Hurst Green" 0, "Turpin" 0; controls "ghost" 39, "Ribble" 8)» — London: Frederick Warne, 1867 book
- Anon., ed. Donal Ó Danachair, «The Newgate Calendar: RICHARD TURPIN, a famous Highway Robber, who shot dead one of his own Comrades and was executed at York on 7th of April, 1739» — ExClassics edition of the Newgate Calendar, 1774 book
- Ribble Valley Borough Council, «Application 3/2024/0188: approval of details reserved by condition 2 (new materials) from Enforcement Appeal Decision APP/Q2371/F/22/3296097» — Planning application portal, 2024 report
- Ken Howarth, «Ghosts, Traditions and Legends of Old Lancashire, p. 192» — Wilmslow: Sigma Leisure, 1993 book
Reviewed by V. Serrano on 2026-09-09 · How we verify our content
📎 Source: Wikipedia (CC BY-SA)
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