Ye Olde Salutation Inn

The Salutation Inn on Maid Marion Way looks much like any other city-centre Alehouse. It is only when viewed from the Hounds Gate side that one realises it is quite an ancient building. Hounds Gate is of extreme antiquity, being a section of the earliest primeval track in this neighbourhood, which was pushed northwards by the castle enclosure.

The date 1240 AD is displayed on the apex wall, which is another clue to the pubs long history. At this time the building was a leather tannery. The workshop was on the ground floor and in the upper reaches, the tannery had living accommodation. Two hundred years later it is thought the building was a private residence owned by a Mr John Alastre.

The "Salutation" to which the sign refers is the ave Maria plena gratia whereby the Archangel Gabriel saluted the Blessed Virgin Mary and was a sign not infrequently used on guest houses associated with religious establishments. It may be purely fortuitous, but this inn is situated half-way between the establishment of the Carmelites in Friar Yard and the Franciscans in Grey Friar Gate. There appears to be no documentary connection between "The Salutation" and either of these friaries, but it is just possible that it represents the guest house of one or the other.
Beneath the pub there is a network of tunnels and caves. In 1937 an investigation by the Thoroton Excavation Society concluded that the ancient caves dated back to the ninth century and that Saxons would have lived in them.

In the late 1990s a ghost became active for a while, performing the usual types of pointless mischief. One landlord had the pub keys vanish from behind the bar late one evening. Baffled, he went upstairs in case he might have somehow mislaid them but his search was fruitless. Totally perplexed, he went back downstairs and found them swinging on the hook behind the bar! On another occasion his wife experienced an intense force field in the cellar and was so unsettled by it she refused ever to go down there again.

The other spectre is undoubtedly a replay, as they are known. A replay type apparition is where a particular event is somehow retained into the fabric of a place and replays itself like a film, captured in time. The apparition is totally unaware of the present and is firmly in its own period of time. At the Salutation there is a highwayman who is seen sitting down, he then leaps up and pulls out a pair of flintlock pistols and shouts mutely at an unseen assailant. The pistols are then fired and the phantom vanishes. In 1730 a highwayman was arrested here so it is assumed this incident is the replay.

Extensions to the pub in 1966 included the hanging of a wrought iron hand outside that was stolen that same night.

We have regular band nights in our upstairs funtion room covering all spectrums of rock and metal.