Feline Fun is written/compiled by
Patrick Roberts
Copyright © 2003-08 Purr 'n' Fur UK
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Feline Fun is written/compiled by Certain features on these pages use JavaScript |
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British pub signs featuring cats
Gallery 2
Begin browsing the galleries below, or see the index of names and locations,
where links will take you straight to a sign or name of interest.
We also have a short article about the history of inn signs here.
More signs in
Gallery 1 Gallery 3 Gallery 4 Gallery 5
Gallery illustrations
Left-click a thumbnail for an enlargement.
In many cases pictures of a pub or other signs are available from text links.
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The Cat & Fiddle: this splendid cat with his fiddle is situated in the Great Barr district of England's second city, Birmingham. |
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The Cat & Fiddle: still another of this name; this whimsical depiction is to be found in the spa town of Cheltenham, Gloucestershire. |
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This imaginative sign, illustrating a scene from the actual story, graces the Puss in Boots pub in Stockport, Greater Manchester. |
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The Cat Tavern is close to the railway station in the Wiltshire cathedral city of Salisbury. There are various cat ephemera inside, and the landlady told me she had five real cats. |
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The Cat Head Inn: this pleasant-looking pub is in the little Somerset village of Chiselborough, not far from Yeovil. We're indebted to Noel Cook for the information that the name probably has nothing to do with cats, and 'cathead' is actually the name of an antique strain of European apple, best used for cooking or drying, and also known as 'catshead' or 'cat's head'. The village of Chiselborough was formerly surrounded by apple orchards, and there still are some there. |
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This Cheshire Cat does not have an inn sign other than the name on the building. It is in the Brinnington area of Stockport, Greater Manchester. |
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The Cat and Custard Pot Inn is in the Gloucestershire village of Shipton Moyne. It is difficult to hazard a guess as to how the name came about, but in fact it is not the only one. |
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The Cat & Lion: this unusually named pub is at Stretton, close to Warrington in Cheshire. |
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We love this interpretation of the Cat and Canary, which is a pub in London's Docklands business area. The two sides of the sign are different: the tables are turned on the cat, which is in the cage with the canary holding the key; and then perching on the cat's head. (Many thanks to Malcolm Robinson for photographing this sign for PnF.) |
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The Cat-i-th-Well (Cat in the Well) is a delightful country pub in a lovely setting on a quiet (and hard-to-find) lane a few miles outside the busy West Yorkshire town of Halifax. One story about the name is apparently that a previous landlord had a wife named Cath, whom he discovered was having an affair — so he drowned her in the well! |
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The Puss 'n' Boots, with this lovely sign (but note the variation in the name), is located near Acomb, a western suburb of the ancient and well-known city of York, in the north of England. |
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Our second Squinting Cat is a suburban pub in Swarcliffe, a district on the east side of Leeds, an important city in the former industrial heartland of West Yorkshire. A great sign. |
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The Whittington & Cat is a town pub near the docks area — much of which has been now redeveloped — in Hull, an important port (full name Kingston-upon-Hull) on the Humber estuary in the east of England. The sign was badly weathered. |
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The third (and, we think, final) Squinting Cat gives another interpretation, this being a quite unusual cut-out metal sign rather than the customary painted one. It is a pub in the countryside near Pannal Ash, a village which in turn is not far from the Yorkshire spa town of Harrogate. |
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The Brass Cat: this neat-looking town pub is in the old centre of the town of Halifax, West Yorkshire. The sign is a modern one rather than a traditional painted one, but we think none the worse for that. |
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The second Brass Cat is not very far from the other one, and is situated right in the centre of the former Lancashire mill town of Bolton. There is no separate pictorial sign. |
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Our fourth and (we think) last Puss in Boots is in the small village of Windley, near Duffield in Derbyshire. It is also the oldest of the four. The sign (the black one to the left, with a verse on one side) is not the original one, which was stolen. The verse is: The water kindly turns the mill, Then try, my lads, how soon or late, The stolen sign was later recovered from a car boot sale, and is now kept safely inside the bar area (see picture). The legend on it says '7 miles to Derby'. |
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This Cat Inn is a well-frequented town pub in the Northwood district of Stoke-on-Trent, the centre of the Potteries in Staffordshire. Unfortunately this sign was very badly faded and it was not possible to enhance it much. |
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The Whittington Stone is one of two pubs on Highgate Hill, in London, renowned for the story of Dick Whittington. |
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The second of the Highgate Hill pubs is the Whittington and Cat. The pictorial sign is inaccessible to photograph and in any case looked in bad shape (what a missed opportunity!), so we can show only the pub itself. |
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Gallery 1 Gallery 3 Gallery 4 Gallery 5
Cats that Got Away
Alphabetical list of pubs and locations
Short history of British pub signs
Notes and Anecdotes
Additional information about particular 'cat signs' or pubs
(cross-linked with gallery entries)
If you know of any more pub signs depicting cats,
or have information about sign or name changes,
please
!
All additions to or suggestions for the gallery gratefully received.
You might like to read about the adventures of Fleetwood who has visited over 60 pubs in Scotland and England with his humans
Grateful thanks are due to the Inn Sign Society for supplying and permission to reproduce images
of many older pub signs from their archive. Where appropriate these are acknowledged in the text above,
but otherwise all photos are our own except where indicated.
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or visit the Purr 'n' Fur home page
Our featured feline at the head of the page, shown having quite a lot of fun, is Ragamuffin, or 'Rags' for short: sadly he is no longer with us. A cat of great character, who seemed to live by the maxim 'Life is for living', it was devastating for me when that life was cut short by a road accident. A 'rescue' cat, he lived with me in North Wales for less than four years only. You can see a little tribute to him here — and a more flattering photo.
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