Red Lion Inn, Royston

History of the Red Lion Inn

The Red Lion Inn was one of the major coaching inns in Royston. It stood at approximately this location.

It achieved notoriety when the son of the owner, Mrs Gatward, turned highwayman on the Royston – Cambridge road. About 1753 he was caught and sentenced to death at Caxton Gibbet, as recorded by antiquarian William Cole.

It was later noted in Alfred Kingston’s Fragments of Two Centuries that Mrs Gatward obtained her son’s body and had it buried in the cellar in the High Street.