The White Horse

What happened after

18th-century coaching inn reported closed by West Suffolk CAMRA, confirmed abandoned by a July 2016 site visit; 2022 planning permission obtained to convert the building to a house and flats, sold at auction.

Closure date on record: 2016

What happened on the show

Alex Polizzi was called to a picturesque inn in Suffolk in the series 7 finale by owners Ann and her husband Paul, who had sunk their life savings into the building but had not made a profit in years. The inn offered eight en-suite bedrooms, a restaurant, bar, cocktail bar and large beer garden, and reputedly several ghosts. The couple loved the place but felt it ran them rather than the other way round, and had run out of ideas. Polizzi had plenty of her own, but when the hotel manager threatened to quit she found herself, as she put it, banging her head against the antique walls, a case where staffing turmoil complicated an already fragile turnaround. Ann and Paul's life-savings gamble aired in the series 7 finale in June 2011, five years before the Suffolk inn was abandoned and sold.

After the cameras left

The White Horse has closed. Identified as the inn on Old Newmarket Road in Risby, near Bury St Edmunds, it was reported closed by West Suffolk CAMRA and confirmed abandoned by a site visit in July 2016. Planning permission was obtained in 2022 to convert the Grade II listed building into a house and flats, and it was sold at auction. A century discrepancy between sources on the building's age leaves the match at medium confidence, but the location, the struggling-business history and the timing all line up. Ann and Paul's savings did not survive the venture.