Stop 6: The Ketton Ox
High Street Life
100 High St, Yarm, TS15 9AU
About This Stop
With an outside painted completely white, The Ketton Ox pub is one of the oldest in Yarm High Street, being around for over 400 years and was once an inn which contained cock-pit rooms.
How to Get Here
The next stop is on the same side of the road right at the bottom of the street – look for the white building.
The History
The Ketton Ox was given its name in 1829, after an ox raised by a man named Charles Colling. It was originally a coaching inn with stables at the rear which were used as a makeshift mortuary and housed the bodies found in the River Tees before they were moved.
Although none have been discovered, there are rumours of secret passages leading under the river. Today, it keeps most of the original structure of the past building, with the windows being identical to as they were.
Did You Know?
Before becoming The Ketton Ox, the pub was known as The Brown Cow, but the most interesting piece of history regarding The Ketton Ox is its illegal activites. If you look up at the top of the building, you will see blacked out oval windows.
Here, illegal cockfighting took place after it was banned in 1849. It contained two rooms, one acting as the ring for the fighting and the other a decoy where people would hide if raids took place. The fighting cocks were shoved down a shute to hide among the chickens.
The Ketton Ox: Then and Now
