Chelmsford’s Ghost Pubs - The Spotted Dog

If there’s one street in Chelmsford that qualifies as the ‘most haunted’ by ghost pubs, it has to be Tindal Street (or Back Street as it was previously known). Over the Edge’s historical researchers have travelled back in time to take a stroll and a few pints along this fabled thoroughfare.

Over the years, so many former hostelries have jostled for space on both sides of the street; establishments such as The Bell Inn, The White Hart Inn, The Angel Inn, The Crown & Sceptre, The Dolphin Inn, The Rose Inn, The Three Arrows, The Unicorn and The Half Moon Inn. What a splendid phantom pub crawl this has been!

Let’s pause a moment to savour our pint in The Spotted Dog at 24 Tindal Street. We’re sat in a pub noted as a significant historical coaching inn with origins dating back to the 15th century and it was initially known as The Talbot in 1600. The inn provides stabling for horses at the rear of the property and its original crownpost roof trusses, are evidence of its medieval construction.

Do you sense a ghostly quality about the pub? Maybe it’s attributable to the tragedy that struck on the night of 22 October 1804. For it was then that a troop of 70 Hanoverian soldiers, who’d arrived in Chelmsford en route during the Napoleonic Wars, were billeted in the stables out the back. 

Before they went to sleep on that fateful night, the soldiers started smoking as they settled in the straw for their rest. Sparks from their clay pipes soon ignited the straw setting the stables fiercely ablaze. Unable to operate the latch of the stable door, the soldiers found that they couldn't escape. Help eventually came, but it was too late for some, and 13 soldiers perished in the fire.

In 1921, the Royal Commission on Historical Monuments will recognize the pub as a timber-framed building worthy of preservation. Sadly, despite this recommendation, The Spotted Dog will go on to be demolished in the 1960s, along with the rest of the buildings located on this side of Tindal Street, to make way for the High Chelmer shopping precinct.