Our Story
Four hundred years
on the same patch of green.
From medieval pilgrims to weekend guests in 2026, The Bull has done one thing the whole time: looked after people.
The Bull has been here, more or less, since the 16th century, first as a coaching inn on the road between Winchester and Canterbury, then as the village pub on Newick green, and now as something in between.
For most of its life, The Bull was a working pub: a pint, a fire, a place to wait for the next stage of the journey. Pilgrims walking to Canterbury would stop here. Drovers moving cattle across the Weald would water themselves and their animals on the green outside. Stagecoaches from London to Lewes used the inn as a halt.
In 2024 the building was carefully renovated, room by room, under Coal & Co's hospitality group. The brief: keep everything that mattered, change everything that did not. The original oak beams stay, hand-hewn and dark with four hundred years of woodsmoke. The four open fires stay. The wonky floors stay.
What changed is everything you cannot see: the kitchen, the plumbing, the heating, the wiring, the rooms upstairs. A serious kitchen led by serious chefs. Nine boutique rooms with Egyptian cotton and deep baths. A cocktail bar and a 200-bin wine list to sit alongside the cask ales.
In 2025 we were named the national winner of the Shepherd Neame Best Food Offer, the highest food award in the company's estate. We mention it not to show off, but to say what kind of pub The Bull is now: a country pub where the food is the reason people travel, and the rooms are the reason they stay the night.
The team
A small team. Loyal regulars.
The Bull is run day-to-day by Ruby Diana Stevens, who knows every regular by name and what they drink before they ask.
Behind the kitchen pass, the chefs cook a menu they actually want to eat. Behind the bar, the team treats wine, beer, and coffee with the same care. There is no choreographed service, no script, no “hi guys”. Just hospitality, done by people who like doing it.
c. 16th century
First recorded as a coaching inn on Newick green.
2024
Major restoration. Boutique rooms added upstairs.
2025
National Winner. Shepherd Neame Best Food Offer.
The shorter version
We buy from people who do one thing well.
The kitchen runs on a 15-mile radius. Beef from the butcher on the high street. Fish off the day boats in Newhaven. Bread from a bakery in Uckfield that delivers it still warm. The wine list leans Sussex.
Almost everything on your plate was on a farm, in a sea, or in an oven within an hour of where you are sitting.
Meet our suppliers
The Journal
Notes from the kitchen, the rooms, the village.
What we are cooking this week, where to walk on a Sunday afternoon, why we changed the menu in March. Written by the people who actually work here.
Read the Journal