Dates for your diaries...

The Chestnut Horse pub was once the Chestnut Horse Farmhouse and part of the Pettiward Estate. The farmhouse was converted in the 1860s or '70s, when the White Horse Inn opposite was demolished and rebuilt to form the estate offices. Edward Fayer, the last butler for the Pettiward household at Finborough Hall, became landlord of the Chestnut Horse when the estate was broken up and sold in 1936. The original farmland remained with the pub freehold and it was farmed for the landlord by a William Castell. Some of it was used for housing where Middlefield Drive now stands.

The present Chestnut Horse is a traditional timber framed village pub, tenanted for Greene King by Mac and Jenny Dobson. Mac and Jenny serve a full range of cask and bottled ales, wines and soft drinks at the bar and in the attractive beer garden round the back, where there is ample car parking. Food is available every lunchtime between 12 noon and 2pm and evening meals are served on Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays. Darts (the Chestnut Horse has a cup-winning darts team), bar billiards and monthly pub quizzes provide the entertainment round an open fire in winter, though the welcome is warm at the Chestnut Horse, whatever the season.

Every year at Easter, the Chestnut Horse hosts the famous Finborough Race of the Boggmen - here's a short history for anyone interested. While having roof repairs carried out on Boyton Hall in the summer of 1975, local farmer Trevor Waspe discovered a contract of employment written, signed and stamped for the year 1897. On closer examination of the document, and through further investigation, the following facts emerged. As it was traditional for sowing to start around the Easter period, each farmer hired a team of six 'min'. The team that Joseph John Hatton hired for Boyton Hall fell out of favour after a drunken brawl on Good Friday 1897. The men were sacked. Word soon got around that another team was needed and on Easter Monday a team from the nearby village of Haughley set out for Boyton Hall. Meanwhile Joseph John Hutton, worried about the situation, had re-employed the 'min'. Both teams appeared, ready for work. To resolve the problem an idea from one James Boggis of Oulton, who was staying at the Hall, was to throw the contract of employment in the air and the first team to get it over the threshold of the pub in the village of Great Finborough won the job. This event was carried on as an annual tradition and as an excuse to relax before the hard work on the land began. However, it fell into disuse in 1915, when so many Suffolk lads were taken for the fields of Flanders during the first world war. The Race of the Boggmen was revived in 1976 and the rest, as they say, is history...

Back to top - Home