The Old Bell stands on the top of a hill and, apart from the Abbey, is the highest building in Malmesbury. It is not surprising, therefore, that there were fortifications on the site many hundreds of years ago. There was probably a Saxon castle, but these were generally built of wood and any evidence of occupation prior to the 12th century has now disappeared.
Probably the stone fortification was that erected by Bishop Roger Poore of Sarum, about 1130, in the reign of Henry I. The only certain remains of this castle are in the wall immediately to the west of the gazebo at the end of the garden. One local historian believes that the central part of The Old Bell was formed from the castle after the grant of King John in 1216 to demolish it.
However the claim to be England's oldest hotel rests on the premise that an almost completely new building was erected around 1220 by Walter Loring (Abott from 1208 to 1244). Its function was to entertain important guests; the Abbey was then one of the most important seats of learning in England.
As far as it is known The Old Bell has been continuously in use as a place of entertainment since that time and it is on the basis of this 770 years of service to the community that it is considered to be England's oldest hotel. But to return to King John's time… important visitors to The Old Bell would not have entered at the front where there are the remains of a stone spiral staircase, but from the rear.
They would have climbed an external covered stairway to enter one of the two halls which stretched upwards from the first floor right to the apex of the roof - some thirty feet. In medieval times this must indeed have been impressive; the greater of these two halls was heated by a stone hooded fireplace similar to the one in the present Great Hall. The only remains of this are now the fluted columns which supported it, part of the hearth which can be seen in the ceiling of the Great Hall and the carved stone string course which is visible inside and outside George Moore on the second floor. In the loft there are remnants of wall paintings on either side of the chimney breast dating from the same period.
The principle medieval feature left is the stone hooded fireplace in the Great Hall. Details of its discovery in 1986 are given on the wall alongside it. There are only a dozen or so examples left from this period and this one is unique in being in an inhabited building and on the ground floor. There is no satisfactory explanation as to why it was built there at all, because the ground floor was the domain of the servants who would scarcely have been thought worthy of the extravagance of a fireplace, let alone one as expensive as this one must have been.
Apart from the walls themselves, the other original 13th Century features are some of the timbers above the Great Hall, and the window on the first floor immediately above the rear entrance (best seen from outside). This was probably inserted by the Abbott Colerne towards the end of the 13th Century.
Up to the late 15th Century the extent of the guest house was from the present Farmers Bar wall through to the end of the Lounge. A further house was then added to the East for the Steward of the Abbey. For some reason that is not clear, the east wall of the guest house was demolished at that time.
Still later in the 17th century, the two upper halls were divided into two floors with a loft above and the roof appeared in its present form. Features remaining from this middle period of the Old Bell's life are the circular staircase at the East End, the window in the sitting room of John Rushout, the large fluted beams in the Athelstan Suite which continue through into Loring, and the fireplace in the residents' sitting room.
The Old Bell reached its present stage of development in 1908 when Joseph Moore is reported to have found a cache of gold and with it built the Edwardian extension which now forms the Farmers Bar; Dining room and the ten bedrooms above them; built what is now the Den and was in 1908 the kitchen, bought Castle House (the former Steward's House) and sundry other properties and refurbished all of this. The story of "Abbey gold" has been viewed with scepticism, but in today's prices all the works he carried out must have cost between £500,000 - £1 million, and it has to be explained how a small innkeeper raised such a large sum if he did not find the gold.
An interesting fact about the spiral staircase at the East End is that it rotates in the opposite way to those in a castle, reason being that in an area that requires fortification the spiral staircase descends anticlockwise, so leaving the "sword arm" free for fighting the enemy. A staircase that descends in the clockwise direction, as in the case of the Old Bell, denotes men of peace.
