• Host:
• Mr and Mrs Simon Harrison

• Where:
• Clifton Street
• Swindon
• Wiltshire SN1 3PY

• Telephone:
• (01793) 523162

• Facilities:
• Car Park
• Garden Or Patio

• Map:
• 

The Clifton, Swindon

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Drinkers are always assured of a hearty welcome at the Clifton - though we cannot guarantee that the hospitality extends to the resident ghost.

The pub is believed to have been built on the site of an old priory, an arrangement apparently not entirely acceptable to a former nun who is now thought to walk the building. She has appeared most often in an upstairs bedroom, but regularly also ventures into the cellar and has sometimes been known to pop into the bar!

The Clifton is easily found on Clifton Street, which snakes down from the top of Kingshill in Swindon's popular Old Town area.

The immediate vicinity used to be called Cyprus, possibly a hint that the landscape here was once cypress trees, but when Arkell's built the Clifton Hotel in 1878 it coincided with a sudden growth of housing in New Swindon, necessary to accommodate the rapidly growing population of railway workers.

There is another railway link in the car park as a 'cliff' was created by excavations of stone for embankments along the Great Western line.

The pub also pays tribute to Isambard Kingdom Brunel, the man who brought the railway to Swindon, with a spendid tiled mural of the Clifton Suspension Bridge he designed.

The Clifton is no longer a hotel, but it remains as probably the best example of a friendly 'backstreet' local in Swindon, highly regarded as much by visitors as it is by its 'locals'.