The Hawes Inn

The pub’s story

The Hawes Inn is a building of several periods beside the Forth at South Queensferry. Historic Environment Scotland dates the original surviving section to the later seventeenth century, with nineteenth-century western additions and a Baronial east wing by Sydney Mitchell & Wilson in 1893. A rear stone marked “IS BB 1638” was reused from the old New Halls house and is not the inn’s construction date. Originally Newhalls Inn, it served as an eighteenth-century change house for stagecoaches using the ferry and appears as Hawes Inn by 1896. Its strongest literary connection is solid: Robert Louis Stevenson’s Kidnapped names the Hawes Inn in its Queensferry scene. The operator’s more specific claim that Stevenson stayed and began writing here remains an attributed story, not a documented fact in this profile. Today it is a Vintage Inns pub with food, cask beer and a prominent Forth Bridge setting.

What to notice

1. 01

   The reused 1638 stone came from the old New Halls house; it is not a construction or pub-opening date.

2. 02

   Read the building in stages: seventeenth-century core, nineteenth-century additions and the 1893 Baronial east wing.

3. 03

   Kidnapped genuinely names the Hawes Inn, but the operator’s claim that Stevenson stayed or wrote here remains unproven in this record.

The time rail

The building, the pub and its interior may date from different periods. The timeline keeps documented dates separate from tradition.