About the Sun Inn
Our History
The Sun Hotel at Troutbeck Bridge is built on the site of an older inn dating from about 1770. In 1769 James Wilson, a blacksmith, paid £19 8s to the Penny family for half-an-acre of their Callgarth estate. Wilson quickly built a new smithy here and licensed his new dwelling as an inn. His choice of location at the foot of the steep hill called St Catherine's Brow was a sound one, for the 'new turnpike' road from Ambleside to Kendal fronting the house was diverting traffic from the older, higher route over Applethwate fell.
When James Wilson died in 1802 he had already made provision for his son John to run the inn, leaving the smithy to son George. John Wilson was innkeeper here till his death in 1823 when the house passed to Mary, his wife, for her ‘natural life’. Mary lived till August 1853 at which time the inn and the outbuildings were placed for sale by public auction. So it was that, a month later and for a sum of £1018, the Sun Inn became owned by Robert Hutchinson Fell, a manufacturer of bobbins at nearby Troutbeck Bridge.
The middle years of the nineteenth century were a time when increasing numbers of the ‘educated classes’ came to see for themselves the natural splendours of the Lake District. Comfortable accommodation was much in demand and provided the impetus for the Sun’s rebuilding – probably in the 1860s. R H Fell retained ownership of the house till his death in 1888 when his sons sold to John Scott, the Skipton brewer, for £2700. A little later, in 1896, the property was conveyed to the Kendal concern of Jonas Alexander. This brewery was bought by Dutton’s of Blackburn in 1947, with Dutton’s becoming part of the Whitbread group in 1964.
Though Wilson’s rude inn and smithy of 1770 have long since given way to one of Lake District’s best known roadside houses, your hosts remain dedicated to continuing the unbroken traditions of service and hospitality which have marked this corner of Cumbria for over 200 years.
