A brief history.

The hotel was built in 1760, fifteen years after Bonnie Prince Charlie's army marched through Moffat. The 1745 rising had shown how poor the country's roads were, and the new mail coaches between London and Scotland needed somewhere to change horses. That is what this building was for. It opened as the King's Arms, and became the Annandale Arms some time in the nineteenth century.

The mail coach arrives, July 1788

The first London to Glasgow mail coach pulled in at four in the morning. A local account describes the landlord out on the steps, the landlady and servant lass behind him, four horses in shining new harness, and a face at every window on the High Street. The coach came in with a fire of pistols and a toot of the horn, changed horses, and drove on for Elvanfoot. The service ran for sixty years, until the railway came in 1848.

Turner, 1801

The painter J.M.W. Turner toured southern Scotland in 1801 and made a few quick sketches of Moffat. Two of them show the hotel, seen from the riverside.

A future Tsar, 1816

In the winter of 1816, Count Nicholas of Russia, later Tsar Nicholas I, stayed here with his officers on a tour of Scotland. He was so pleased with his stay that he is said to have tipped the landlord as much as the bill. For the two hundredth anniversary in 2016, the Russian Consul General unveiled a plaque in the foyer.

Rupert Brooke, 1912

The poet Rupert Brooke, best known for The Soldier, stayed in September 1912 and wrote a letter from the hotel to Noel Olivier, cousin of the actor Laurence Olivier.

Funerals, 1876

Robert Norris, the proprietor in the 1870s, also ran a funeral service, probably from buildings at the back of the hotel that have long since gone. His receipt for one funeral came to nineteen shillings, 95p today.

The building's newest chapter started in 2024. Read how we brought it back to life.