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The Three Cups Inn

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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'.

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. ♥️♥️♥️

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...

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. ♥️♥️♥️

26/05/2026

Funny where life takes you sometimes.

The Window ♥️♥️♥️

In the beginning, I left social media to the younger staff.

Which was probably sensible really.
At least they knew what all the buttons did.

My manageress, who is also my best friend, used to do a lot of the posting.

We just saw social media differently.

She was trying to make The Cups visible in a fast-moving world.
I was trying to make it feel like itself.

Neither of us were wrong really.

Then came the TikTok stage.

Videos.
Music.
Everybody telling you what businesses are supposed to do online now.

None of it really felt like The Cups to me.

So I tried doing social media myself.

Which, to be honest, wasn’t exactly a roaring success in the beginning.

Then one morning, walking to work, I noticed something.

Every day I pass our local butcher’s shop.

I’ve known the boys who run it all my life. Their family came to the village just before ours did.

And their shop window is lovely.

Not just because of the meat or the displays.
Because of the family photographs sitting amongst it all.

You walk past and feel something.

History.
Family.
People behind the business.

And I suddenly realised that was the bit I loved.

Not really the advertising.
The feeling behind it.

That’s when it hit me.

Our family had a story too.

That’s when I realised maybe people weren’t only looking for polished businesses anymore.

Maybe they were looking for people.

The difference is, a butcher can put family photos in the window.

If I started blu-tacking family pictures all over the front of a 600 year old pub, people in Stockbridge would probably think I’d gone mad.

So instead, I started putting our story somewhere else.

Because stories are strange things really.

If nobody tells them, eventually nobody remembers them.

So I started writing ours down.

Not in the windows.

In the words. ♥️♥️♥️

18/05/2026

Back then, apparently pub owners only came in one format.

Sorry… He Isn’t Here ♥️♥️♥️

When I first took over The Cups, I was twenty.

For quite a few years after that, salesmen would walk in and ask to speak to the owner.

You could spot them straight away.

Suit.
Briefcase.
Quick scan of the bar.

Then over they’d come.

“Hello… is the owner in?”

Now the owner was standing right in front of them.

But apparently I wasn’t what they had in mind.

So I’d say,

“Sorry… he isn’t here.”

That usually did it.

They’d hand me a business card and ask if I could give it to him.

Meanwhile “he” was pulling pints behind the bar.

It happened more than once.

Funny what people see…
and what they don’t. ♥️♥️♥️

12/05/2026

Sometimes I look at younger people and think,
you have absolutely no idea what’s coming for you.

Then I remember…
neither did I.

Two Women at the Bar♥️♥️♥️

The older woman notices the freckles first.

Same across the nose.
Same little one near the lip.

The younger woman is sitting on a bar stool with all the confidence of someone who hasn’t yet learnt how expensive mistakes can become.

She’s loud.
Full of energy.
Completely unafraid of life.

The older woman already knows better.

“What are you drinking then?” the younger one asks.

“Prosecco.”

The younger woman smiles.
“Well at least that hasn’t changed.”

“No,” says the older woman.
“Apparently not.”

A man walks straight into the pub and asks,
“Do you serve food?”

The older woman looks around at all the people eating.

“Still happening then?”

“Oh constantly.”

The younger woman laughs again.

The older woman studies her for a minute.

“So you bought The Cups?”

“Yep.”

“At your age?”

“Yep.”

“Why?”

The younger woman shrugs.

“Didn’t really think about it that much.”

“That much is obvious.”

“I just thought it looked exciting.”

The older woman laughs into her drink because that is exactly the sort of decision she would make.

“You do realise if you hadn’t bought this place you could’ve travelled the world?”

“I still can.”

The older woman smiles at that.
Because she remembers still believing that too.

“You won’t though,” she says.
“Not properly.”
“You’ll go away for a few days and spend half the holiday checking your phone wondering if someone’s turned the cellar cooling off or forgotten the beer order.”

The younger woman looks horrified.

“Does that happen?”

“Oh yes.”

Someone at the end of the bar interrupts to say the beer isn’t quite cold enough.

Another says it’s too cold.

The older woman points at them both.

“There. That’s your future.”

The younger woman grins.

“I’ll manage.”

“How exactly? You’ve got no experience, no money and half your plans seem to rely on blind optimism.”

“Well… hard work.”

“That’s not a plan.”

“Pure bloody mindedness.”

The older woman nods.

“Annoyingly, that part actually works.”

Then she asks the question she’s really been thinking about.

“And the men?”

The younger woman immediately groans.

“Oh don’t.”

“No seriously. What were you doing?”

The younger woman laughs into her drink.

“I had terrible taste.”

“That explains a lot.”

“I thought they were exciting.”

“Yes,” says the older woman.
“That was usually the problem.”

The younger woman nearly spits her drink out laughing.

Then she looks at the older woman properly.

“You look tired.”

“I am tired.”

“But not unhappy.”

“Did we waste our youth then?”

The older woman thinks about it for a second.

All the hours.
All the stress.
The weekends worked while everyone else was out enjoying themselves.

Then she looks around the pub.

At the noise.
The people.
The smiles.
The life of it all.

“No,” she says.
“I think we just spent it building something.”

The younger woman nods.

“Well that’s alright then.”

The older woman smiles.

“You really weren’t frightened of anything back then were you?”

The younger woman shrugs.

“That’s because when you’re young, if it all goes wrong, what’s there to lose?
You just start again.”

The older woman looks at her for a long moment.

Same freckles.
Same laugh.

Just the same woman.
One at the start of it all.
And one who somehow kept the whole thing going. ♥️♥️♥️

05/05/2026

The right decision doesn’t always feel like it.

Every Decision Costs Something ♥️♥️♥️

People sometimes say to me, you’ve done well to keep The Cups going.
I always think, it doesn’t feel like that from the inside.
It feels like constant adjustment.

Not a day goes by without something changing.
Sometimes it’s small. A lick of paint in the gents. New cushions outside. Something different on the menu.
Sometimes it isn’t.

I’ve had to change breweries recently to keep the prices where they need to be.
That decision cost me someone.
They chose to drink elsewhere.

That stung.

Because it wasn’t done for the sake of it.
It was done so more people could still walk through the door without thinking twice.

That’s the part you don’t see.

Every choice fixes one thing and unsettles another.
You do what’s right for the whole place, and you accept that not everyone comes with you.

And then you adjust again.
Because it never settles.
Costs move. Habits change. The way people use pubs shifts without warning.
You just feel it happening.

From the outside, it can look the same.
Same name. Same bar.

But behind it, it’s moving all the time.
It has to.

Because standing still is the quickest way to disappear.

So I carry on.
Small decisions. Every day.
Keeping it going.
Keeping it a pub. ♥️♥️♥️

30/04/2026

Do You Remember the Book That Was Stolen?

The Book Hasn’t Been Returned ♥️♥️♥️

The book on the ledge in the bar hasn’t been returned.

It mattered to me.

It had been there for years.

That’s that. It’s gone.

But it’s made me think about the books we all had growing up.

The ones that mark the stages in your life.

The Faraway Tree when you were about ten.
Reading out loud, away in another world.

A Girl Guide handbook at twelve.
Trying to get things right. Belonging to something.

Something like Patche’s at fourteen, an annual.
When everything suddenly felt a bit more grown up and you started noticing everything. And feeling slightly awkward about it.

And then later… What Not to Wear.
Working out what suits you. What doesn’t. Who you are, not quite getting it.

Different ages. Same sort of path.

I was going to put mine on that ledge as well.

I think I’ll keep a closer eye on them. ♥️♥️♥️

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

http://www.the3cups.co.uk/

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