Crawley Old Town: ELEVEN PICTURES: The George Hotel

The George was one of the country's most famous and successful coaching inns, and the most important in Sussex, because of its location halfway between the capital city, London, and the fashionable seaside resort of Brighton. Cited as "Crawley's most celebrated building", it has Grade II* listed status.

It is known that a building called the George has existed on the site since the 16th century or earlier, and many sources date the core of the existing inn to 1615. The George Hotel has three principal sections, facing east and running from south to north parallel with Crawley High Street. Nothing of the exterior is original, except perhaps for parts of the tiled roof. The present structure is made up of disparate parts of various dates: the inn expanded to take in adjacent buildings as its success grew in the 18th and 19th centuries.

The inn has been associated with royalty, bareknuckle prizefighting, smuggling among other things, and has been the subject of novels and paintings. It was central to the plot of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's mystery novel Rodney Stone, written in 1896. The hotel is also reputedly haunted by the ghost of a nightwatchman, Mark Hurston (or Hewton) and other curious figures.

The first mention of The George appears in 1579, when landowner Richard Covert died and passed on an area of land (a tenement) to his son. This necessitated a payment to the Lord of the manor. The tenement bore the name of The George, and was situated in a valuable position: in the centre of Crawley, on the west side of the High Street (and just inside the parish of Ifield, a nearby village; the boundary between Ifield and Crawley parishes ran along the middle of the High Street). The building on the land was almost certainly an inn at that time, and many sources assert that its oldest parts date from about 1450. Its centre section, an open hall-house of a type common in the area, may be even older, possibly late 14th century.

An early remodelling came in 1615, when a timber-framed extension was built on the south side, a new jettied cross-wing was added at the front and a stone fireplace was installed. This bears the date 1615 (although this may have been carved later), and has carvings and arches. Meanwhile, a gallows was erected outside the hotel, partly spanning the High Street; one end was attached to the top floor of the building.

Bareknuckle prizefighting was a major local attraction from which The George benefited: nearby Crawley Down and Copthorne were "the most renowned battlefields in the south of England", and The George itself became "the hub of the pugilistic universe". Tens of thousands of people of all classes—including members of the Royal Family (such as the Prince Regent), statesmen and famous playwrights—would visit Crawley Down or Copthorne Common to watch and bet on extremely violent contests which could last for hours; the George was invariably used as the base from which to visit these illegal bouts. Other famous visitors of this era included Lord Nelson—whose sister lived in the nearby village of Handcross, Queen Victoria, who on one occasion was stranded overnight when her carriage broke down, and the Prince Regent, whose patronage of Brighton and regular travelling of the London–Brighton road indirectly brought about the upturn in fortunes experienced by Crawley in general, and the George Hotel in particular, during the 18th century. In this era, it was one of Britain's best-known and most important coaching inns, and it held "the premier position" among Sussex's many such establishments.

Also by this time, the former gallows had been converted into an inn sign that soon became a landmark, and some structural and exterior alterations were made—the first of many over the subsequent years.The earliest known photograph of the George, dated 1867, shows a dilapidated building of several uncoordinated parts: it had expanded over the years to take in buildings on each side of the original medieval inn, and it was considered a purely functional building with no obvious architectural merit.

The George underwent more renovation and was extended further. In particular, an old (possibly 18th-century) free-standing building which stood in the middle of the wide High Street, and which was once used as a candle factory, was acquired by the George's owners and became an annex. It was this building, rather than the main part of the hotel, which accommodated Queen Victoria when she was forced to stay overnight.

The George Hotel has three principal sections, facing east and running from south to north parallel with Crawley High Street. Despite uncertainty over its early history, the building is generally agreed to have 15th-century origins, which are most evident in the northernmost bay. This section has a much lower roofline than the rest of the hotel, although the whole building is two-storey. The northern section is believed to have been a two-bay open hall-house with a parlour wing; their thick wooden roof beams (in the form of crown posts), blackened by smoke, and timber-framed walls survive. The centre section was the south wing of the original building; it would have been the service area to the hall-house, with kitchen facilities and similar, and formed a cross-wing with large joists and a cellar. The rear wall has braces which suggest the former existence of a rear entrance leading to the stables behind. A stone fireplace inside may be as old as the date carved on it—1615—but the inscription is believed to be more recent. None of the exterior is original, although parts of the tiled roof may be. It is laid with slabs of Horsham stone—a local material commonly used on old roofs in the Crawley area.