Spread Eagle, Midhurst

‘that oldest and most revered of all the prime inns of this world‘.
Hilaire Belloc, ‘The Four Men’ (a celebration of Sussex)


The Spread Eagle, Midhurst is one of the oldest hotels around, a surviving coaching inn. This is the corner of West Street, oldest part of the collection of buildings, dating back  in parts to 1430. with its half-timbered and jettied first floor, and lattice windows. Originally it would have been a row of shops facing into West Street, converted and then made into accommodation and stables when the Spread Eagle became a coaching inn. The ‘newer’ building to the far left is brick and stone, probably Georgian.

The Spread Eagle stands at the junction of the old London-Chichester and the east-west Winchester routes. Queen Elizabeth I is said to have stayed here in 1591, and was entertained ‘marvelously, nay excessively‘. King Edward VII stayed here in 1909. But perhaps the two most notorious visitors were Hermann Göring and von Ribbentrop, two top Nazis who stayed in 1939. Word went out that they were here to enjoy the racing, but the truth is, allegedly, that Goring had his eye on Leonardslee Estate at Horsham as a post invasion country seat. Lucky escape for all of us.