The Three Cups Inn

The Three Cups Inn The Three Cups Inn is a indepenant 15th Century Coaching Inn located in the heart of the Test Valley in Stockbridge. Free House. Creating a intimate atmosphere.

Within is housed, wooden beamed ceilings, stone-wood flooring, handcrafted oak tables and chairs, fresh flowers, open fires places and candle light. The present owner has been established at The Three Cups since 1978 and has enjoyed seeing customers coming back year after year. Visit our customer comment page. The Three Cups is conveniently located in the one of Hampshires most beautiful and anc

ient towns, Stockbridge. In the heart of the Test Valley. We positively encourage a home from home atmosphere, making us popular for business people, weekend breaks and locals alike. Stockbridge is famous for its stunning scenery, chalk stream trout fishing and wildlife, the River Test meanders right through the town including the 3 Cups garden.

'The in place for those in the know'.

I Nearly Ignored ItA Message From A Stranger ♥️♥️♥️A few months ago I got a message from a man called Paul McNeil.I’d ne...
16/06/2026

I Nearly Ignored It

A Message From A Stranger ♥️♥️♥️

A few months ago I got a message from a man called Paul McNeil.

I’d never met him.

He said he’d been reading some of my stories about The Cups and wondered if I’d be interested in what he did.

He is a genealogist.

I’ll be honest, I wasn’t entirely sure.

When people contact you out of the blue, you never quite know.

But we arranged to meet for a coffee.

What makes me smile now is that neither of us really knew where it would lead.

Paul thought there might be a interesting story hidden in the history of The Cups.

If I’m honest, I wasn’t so sure.

As it turns out, we were both wrong.

There wasn’t a story.

There were hundreds of them.

The funny thing is that I spend my time listening to people in the pub and writing down the things they say.

Paul spends his time listening to people who have been dead for hundreds of years and writing down what they left behind.

When you think about it, we were doing much the same thing all along.

We just happened to be looking in different directions.

This week we ended up in the Hampshire Chronicle.

Not bad for a coffee meeting I nearly didn’t have. ♥️♥️♥️

Dont forget to join us this Sunday for fathers day in the garden 😊
16/06/2026

Dont forget to join us this Sunday for fathers day in the garden 😊

Come join us Fathers day Sunday 21st June 🕺💃Weather is looking great. So afternoon in the garden with some music and dan...
12/06/2026

Come join us Fathers day Sunday 21st June 🕺💃

Weather is looking great. So afternoon in the garden with some music and dancing.

Back then, a full shift at the pub was only the warm upFinishing Work Was Only The Beginning ♥️♥️♥️One thing I’ve reali...
11/06/2026

Back then, a full shift at the pub was
only the warm up

Finishing Work Was Only The Beginning ♥️♥️♥️

One thing I’ve realised looking back at life at The Cups when I was young.

We had unbelievable amounts of energy.

Not because life was easy.
It wasn’t.

Back then, working at The Cups was full on.

Long hours.
Busy.
People constantly coming and going.
Weekends that felt endless.

I’d finish work around 9pm exhausted.

Or at least I should have been exhausted.

Instead, I’d fly upstairs, get changed at record speed, redo my makeup, shout goodbye to Mum and Dad and be back out the door within 20 minutes, ready for the night to begin.

And everybody else our age was exactly the same.

No texting:
“Where are you?”

No spending forty minutes trying to organise things.

You knew where everybody would be.

You started in one pub because that’s where everyone met.

Then as the night went on, the whole crowd slowly moved through the town together.

Pubs closed at eleven which, back then, basically meant:
right… now we go to the clubs.

Then at some ridiculous hour of the night we’d all end up standing outside eating kebabs as if that counted as proper nutrition.

And somehow we still turned up for work the next morning functioning on about three hours sleep, garlic sauce and blind optimism.

Looking back now, I genuinely don’t know how we did it.

These days if I finish a busy shift at The Cups, sometimes I need ten minutes silence in a dark room before anyone asks me another question.

But back then?

Working in a pub didn’t drain your social battery.

It was your social life. ♥️♥️♥️

I Thought I Knew The StoryThe Story Before My Story ♥️♥️♥️I’ve been writing about The Cups.About my parents.About growin...
08/06/2026

I Thought I Knew The Story

The Story Before My Story ♥️♥️♥️

I’ve been writing about The Cups.

About my parents.

About growing up here.

About running a pub.

About the people who walk through the door today.

In my head, that was The Cups.

Then I met local genealogist Paul McNeil.

And I realised I only knew a tiny part of it.

My family arrived here in 1978.

I’ve been here most of my life.

I thought I knew this building.

But Paul started showing me records from hundreds of years before my parents ever arrived.

In fact, he has gone back as far as the records allow.

Back to the earliest references to The Cups, the families connected to it and even to Stockbridge itself when it was the only crossing point on the River Test.

As far back as it can be traced, Paul has followed it.

Blacksmiths.

Landlords.

Politicians.

Travellers.

Families whose names have long since disappeared from Stockbridge, but whose lives were tied to this same building.

At one point The Cups was even used as a hub for political elections hundreds of years ago.

One thing Paul said has stayed with me.

Families have histories.

Buildings do too.

And some of them have been standing here telling theirs for hundreds of years.

Suddenly I wasn’t looking at The Cups as our pub anymore.

I was looking at it as everybody’s pub.

A building that has stood here while generation after generation passed through its doors.

The strange thing is that Paul and I are almost telling the same thing from opposite directions.

He’s looking back through centuries of records and memories.

I’m standing behind the bar writing about the people who are here now.

Somewhere in the middle, those two worlds meet.

I’ve loved the process too.

Paul has worked incredibly hard uncovering all of this history, and it’s been fascinating meeting in the middle, with him bringing the earliest chapters and me writing the latest ones.

Because for the first time I’ve started to understand that The Cups was never just part of my life.

I’m just one small chapter in something that has been unfolding here for hundreds of years. ♥️♥️♥️

A Few Words From a Pub ♥️♥️♥️The trouble with hospitality is most people only notice it when it disappears.The local pub...
03/06/2026

A Few Words From a Pub ♥️♥️♥️

The trouble with hospitality is most people only notice it when it disappears.

The local pub.
The café you always meet in.
The hotel where families stay.
The restaurant where birthdays happen.
The places that hold communities together.

What many people don’t realise is that hospitality in the UK pays one of the highest VAT rates in Europe.

20%.

Meanwhile countries like France, Spain and Italy support hospitality with lower rates because they understand what these businesses give back to local towns and villages.

This campaign is asking for hospitality VAT to be reduced to 10%.

Not for luxury.
Not for greed.
Just to give pubs, restaurants, cafés and hotels a fairer chance to survive rising costs and protect jobs.

If you care about independent businesses, local high streets and places with real people behind them, please take a minute to sign it ♥️♥️♥️

03/06/2026

How can you get involved? Download the toolkit here industry be ready for the 1 july. use your venues, platforms and networks to spread the message. ❋ Sign the petition Sign the petition and share it with all of your teams - we need as many of you to sign this NOW. ❋ Share our website Put the li...

Today’s luxury is fast WiFi. Back then it was getting the third bath.Luxury Was Different in the 1970s ♥️♥️♥️When my par...
01/06/2026

Today’s luxury is fast WiFi. Back then it was getting the third bath.

Luxury Was Different in the 1970s ♥️♥️♥️

When my parents first owned The Cups in the 1970s, people expected very different things from a hotel.

We had no central heating.

No tea trays in the rooms.

Just heavy floral bedspreads, electric blankets and a level of fire risk that nobody seemed remotely concerned about.

People even smoked in bed with the electric blankets switched on.

Looking back, it’s extraordinary any of us survived the decade.

There were no duvets either.

Just layers of blankets and tightly tucked sheets that held you in position all night whether you wanted to move or not.

If you fancied a cup of tea, it wasn’t sitting on a tray in the room.

You rang downstairs and somebody brought it up.

Wake-up calls worked much the same way.

No mobile phones.

No alarms.

Just a knock on the door.

“Morning… wake-up call.”

You could also rent a portable television for the night.

Black and white was perfectly acceptable.

Colour felt positively glamorous.

And hardly anyone expected an en-suite bathroom.

Five bedrooms sharing one bathroom wasn’t unusual.

Unfortunately, The Cups only had a domestic hot water tank.

So after about two and a half baths, the entire building entered a state of managed disappointment.

Guests arrived without booking.

People simply drove around until they found somewhere they liked.

No apps.

No comparison websites.

No online reviews.

If somebody was unhappy, they told you to your face.

Different world really.

Although judging by the number of repeat customers, none of it seems to have put them off. ♥️♥️♥️

Address

High Street
Stockbridge
SO206HB

Opening Hours

Monday 12am - 11pm
Tuesday 12am - 11pm
Wednesday 12am - 11pm
Thursday 12am - 11pm
Friday 12am - 11pm
Saturday 12am - 11pm
Sunday 12pm - 10pm

Website

Alerts

Be the first to know and let us send you an email when The Three Cups Inn posts news and promotions. Your email address will not be used for any other purpose, and you can unsubscribe at any time.

Contact The Restaurant

Send a message to The Three Cups Inn:

Shortcuts

Share

Category