31/05/2026
The Greyhound
✦ Tong Lane, Tong Village, Bradford · Grade II Listed · Est. c.1800 · Formerly Part of the Tempest Estate ✦
It looks like something from a picture postcard. A low-beamed Georgian pub on a quiet village lane, cricket ground out the back, ancient church next door, a handful of old stone farmhouses and cottages lining the road. Tong Village, Bradford — tucked between the A650 and the M62, a strange island of rural England surrounded by motorways and suburbs. And at its heart, a Grade II listed pub that has been watching over this village for 200 years — sitting on ground that has been sacred, bloodied, and haunted for at least 3,000. 🏏🩸
The building you drink in today dates to around 1800, licensed to serve alcohol from approximately 1850. But this was not the village's first pub. Before The Greyhound existed in its current form, Tong's main inn was The Griffin — standing directly adjacent to St James' Church on Tong Lane. When The Griffin's licence was eventually transferred, it moved to a straw-thatched building further down Tong Lane before settling on its current site. The cricket team — one of Yorkshire's oldest — still uses the griffin as its emblem, a ghost of the original inn preserved in sport while the building itself vanished into history. The pub you sit in inherited a tradition from a building that no longer exists. Everything in Tong Village is like this — layered, replaced, built on top of something older and darker. 🦅
⛪ "Archaeological investigations in 1979 found the remains of a probable earlier chapel, dating to the 11th century, standing within the foundations of the 12th century chapel. A grave-marker found during these works implies that there was a burial ground here prior to the 12th century, suggesting that Tong was possibly a pre-Conquest settlement." — Familypedia / Tong Village historical record
⚰️ 3,000 YEARS OF THE DEAD BENEATH THIS VILLAGE
When archaeologists excavated beneath St James' Church — which stands immediately between The Greyhound pub and the old Marriott hotel — in 1980, they made a series of extraordinary discoveries. Beneath the 1727 church rebuilt by Sir George Tempest lay the foundations of a Norman church from c.1140. Beneath that, the walls of a Saxon church. And within those Saxon foundations: grave markers indicating a burial ground that pre-dates the Norman Conquest. People were buried on this ground before 1066. Before the Normans. Possibly before the Vikings. And alongside the Saxon remains, archaeologists also uncovered fragments of Roman pottery and a flint barbed arrowhead from the Bronze Age — evidence of human settlement and death on this exact site for close on 3,000 years. The Greyhound Inn sits yards from a burial ground that has been absorbing the dead since the Bronze Age. The church between the pub and the hotel is built, layer by layer, on top of 3,000 years of bones.
The village itself appears in the Domesday Book of 1086 as "Tuinc" — held at the time of the survey by Ilbert de Lacy, one of William the Conqueror's most powerful Norman allies, who controlled 162 manors across Yorkshire. Before de Lacy, Tong had been farmed by a Saxon lord named Stainulf — almost certainly displaced or killed in the chaos following the Norman Conquest. By the time de Lacy's surveyors arrived, the ancient Saxon church that Stainulf's people had worshipped in was already being demolished to make way for a Norman replacement. This village has been a place of displacement, conquest, and erasure since before most of England's towns existed.
⚔️ THE TEMPEST FAMILY — CATHOLIC RECUSANTS, ROYALIST SOLDIERS & LORDS OF THE MANOR
For over 400 years, from 1527 to 1941, Tong Village was entirely owned and controlled by the Tempest family — Lords of the Manor of Tong, living at Tong Hall (now a business park). Every cottage, every farm, every building in the village — including the pub — was theirs. The Tempests were a Catholic recusant family in an age when Catholicism was a criminal offence. To be a recusant — to refuse to attend Church of England services — meant fines, imprisonment, and the constant threat of worse. The Tempests at Tong endured this for generations, holding their faith quietly while their Protestant neighbours watched.
When the English Civil War came to Yorkshire in the 1640s, the Tempests chose the Royalist side — and they fought. A Tempest commanded a regiment in the Marquess of Newcastle's Royalist army, fighting at the catastrophic Battle of Marston Moor in 1644 — the battle that effectively ended Royalist power in the north of England. Meanwhile, just a few miles from Tong, the Royalist Earl of Newcastle was occupying Bolling Hall in Bradford — where, according to one of Yorkshire's most famous ghost stories, a spectral woman appeared and pulled his bedsheets, begging him to "pity poor Bradford" and spare its people from massacre. Ten Bradford citizens were killed. The Tempests' world was collapsing in blood and fire — and the village they controlled sat in the middle of it all.
The Greyhound Inn's own listing confirms it was part of the Tempest estate, only sold off when the Hall and estate were finally disposed of in 1941. Every pint pulled in that pub before 1941 was pulled on Tempest land. Every landlord answered, ultimately, to the Catholic Royalist family in the Hall.
👻 THE CIVIL WAR GHOST — "PITY POOR BRADFORD" — 2 MILES FROM TONG
The most famous paranormal incident in Bradford's history occurred during the same Civil War that the Tempests of Tong fought in. The Earl of Newcastle, Royalist commander, was billeted at Bolling Hall, Bradford in 1643. He had given orders that the rebellious Puritan townspeople of Bradford would be put to the sword after its capture. According to the account — recorded contemporaneously and still accepted by historians as a genuine record of the commander's claim — during the night, a ghostly woman appeared, tore the bedclothes from him repeatedly, and cried "pity poor Bradford, pity poor Bradford." He rescinded the massacre order. Only ten people were killed instead of the entire population. The ghost of Bolling Hall is credited with saving Bradford. The Tempests of Tong Hall were related to the Tempests of Bolling Hall — the same family, a few miles apart. The Civil War ghost haunted ground the Tong Tempests helped to conquer. Over twenty full-bodied apparitions have since been reported at Bolling Hall. It is considered one of the most haunted buildings in England.
The Greyhound itself — Grade II listed, low-beamed, its bar unchanged in character for generations — carries its own quiet mysteries. The building predates its official licensing record, with structures on the site possibly going back earlier than its c.1800 date. Its predecessor, The Griffin, stood next to a churchyard that covers pre-Norman graves. The village has no bus route — deliberately isolated, cut off from the surrounding conurbation by the Tempest family's resistance to industrialisation for four centuries. Tong is one of the few places in West Yorkshire that successfully refused to be absorbed by the Industrial Revolution. The Tempests kept it frozen. The village you visit today is, in its essential bones, the Tempest family's village. Their Catholic, Royalist, recusant world, preserved in gritstone. 🏰
🪨 PRE-NORMAN GRAVES · ROMAN COINS · BRONZE AGE ARROWHEADS
Roman coins dated before 69 AD — pre-Flavian, the era of Nero — were found in the vicinity of Westgate Hill near Tong. Two more Roman coins from the 2nd and 3rd centuries were found nearby. An undated prehistoric flint was uncovered within the grounds of Tong Hall itself. Bronze Age arrowheads and Roman pottery beneath St James' Church. A pre-Norman grave marker beneath the Norman foundations. The soil beneath Tong Village is a palimpsest of 3,000 years of human habitation, religion and death. The Greyhound Inn's beer garden — the cricket ground behind it — the churchyard between them — all of it sits on top of a landscape that has been occupied, farmed, prayed over, fought over and buried in since before the Romans came to Britain. Whatever you feel when you stand in that pub garden, listening to the sound of cricket on a summer afternoon, the ground under your feet has a very long memory indeed.
The Greyhound Inn, Tong Village. Grade II listed. Built around 1800 on a lane that has been walked for 3,000 years. Named after a pub that no longer exists. Part of a Catholic Royalist estate until 1941. Yards from a church built on Saxon graves built on Roman pottery built on Bronze Age arrowheads. The prettiest village pub between Bradford and Leeds. And the one sitting on the deepest history. 🩸
The Greyhound Inn. Tong Lane. Tong Village. Bradford. The ground here has never stopped remembering. 🏏
