About The Elephant’s Nest Inn
The Elephant’s Nest Inn Bed & Breakfast is located in a quintessentially English – and Devonshire – country pub set in a peaceful location within the Dartmoor National Park.
Although our pub is currently closed to daily trading, we are pleased to offer our customers a full bed and breakfast service with dinner if required.
Based in our traditional pub, there are open log fires, thick stone walls and slate floors inside, and outside there is a large and beautifully manicured garden which provides marvellous views of the moor.
What’s in a name?
Unsurprisingly this is the question we are asked most frequently. Until the early 1950’s the pub was called, somewhat boringly, The New Inn – there having once been an older inn, The Black Lion, further up the lane.
The landlord at the time, a well upholstered gentleman by the name of Charles Ossington who weighed in at 20+ stone, was in the habit of pulling pints or turning round to use the spirit optics while continuing to remain seated on a stool he had behind the, then, small bar.
One day a regular customer came in and said “You look like an elephant sitting on a nest”. Charles was tickled by the description and accordingly applied to the local magistrates to change the name; they agreed, and ‘The Elephant’s Nest Inn was born. Curiously, ‘The New Inn’ still appears on certain Ordnance Survey maps so please don’t get confused.
