Witch · Leatherhead
Open on the map: directions, what's there today and read-aloud →
Bring your pots, your pans, your rings. Elynour's ale is ready.
See it clearly
Working pub by Leatherhead bridge. Check before you go.
Tudor women queued at this door, so the poet said, pawning their wedding rings for Elynour's ale.
By Leatherhead bridge stands the Running Horse, a pub old enough to have served Tudor drinkers. Around 1520 the court poet John Skelton wrote The Tunnyng of Elynour Rummyng, a riotous and unkind poem about an ugly alewife near Leatherhead and the crowds of women who swapped pots, pans and wedding rings for her ale. Tradition makes the Running Horse her house. The VCH saw no reason to doubt that she was a real woman, as the Rumming name appears in local records. Her reputation comes almost entirely from Skelton, whose portrait of her is a satire.