OUR HISTORY

The pub the free-traders built.

Built in 1642

Our walls first went up on the stretch of Fore Street where Looe's boats came in, most likely as a merchant's house which makes it fitting that trade, legal and otherwise, has run through this building ever since. By 1642, the year the Civil War broke out, this was already a working part of the harbour; in the generations that followed, it became a smugglers' house instead, with brandy, tobacco and salt run in from the Channel under the noses of the Revenue men and stashed in cellars that still sit beneath your feet today.

Grade II*

The building is now Grade II* listed which is a recognition reserved for places of more than special historic interest, and there aren't many left standing on this stretch of coast.

Even the name has its own tale. Local legend holds that The Golden Guinea was so called after a hoard of gold coins thought to be the proceeds of piracy rather than smuggling which was found within these walls and carted off to Liskeard by horse and cart. Upstairs, keep an eye out for the first-floor oriel windows, the rare projecting bay windows original to the building and there aren't many of their kind left on this coast. The contraband, and the gold, are long gone. The low beams, the thick stone, and the welcome for anyone coming in off the water are exactly as they were.