The town of books
Hay-on-Wye
A book town on the Wye, with castle history, old inns and two long-distance paths that part company here.
- Best for
- Bookshops, castle history and riverside walking
- Give it
- Time for books, old stone and the riverbank
- Don't miss
- Where Offa's Dyke Path and the Wye Valley Walk part company
Photo: Adrian Farwell · CC BY 3.0 · cropped
The Fox verdict
Books are only the first chapter
Hay pairs its book-town story with a restored castle, historic inns, an old market hall and walks beside the Wye.
Start with Richard Booth's bookselling legacy, then move through the castle's medieval and Jacobean layers, St Mary's surviving medieval tower and the Cheese Market hall. The riverbank and two long-distance paths give the town an outdoor counterpoint.
Where to go
Places in Hay-on-Wye
Every place below is checked against a published source, listed with what it is and how long to give it.
Local signatures
3 placesThe Old Black Lion
A 17th-century coaching inn and restaurant with rooms, locally sourced changing British menus and a Civil War story linking it to Oliver Cromwell.
- Visit length
- Editorial estimate: Allow around 90 minutes
- Locality
- Lion Street
St Mary's Parish Church
A Grade II church on a 12th-century site, with a mostly 15th-century tower and a record of Archbishop Baldwin preaching here in 1188.
- Visit length
- Editorial estimate: Allow around 45 minutes
- Locality
- near Login Brook and the River Wye
Offa's Dyke Path
A 177-mile National Trail between Prestatyn and Chepstow that passes through Hay and follows the line of the roughly 1,200-year-old frontier earthwork.
- Visit length
- Editorial estimate: Allow around 90 minutes
- Locality
- passing through Hay
Food & drink
2 placesThe Three Tuns
A historic pub and restaurant in a 16th-century timber-framed building, with an Italian-inspired menu, a huge inglenook and an original dog-leg staircase.
- Visit length
- Editorial estimate: Allow around 90 minutes
- Locality
- in Hay
Cheese Market Hall
A market hall completed in 1835 for selling dairy produce and still used by a smaller market of producers, makers and independent traders.
- Visit length
- Editorial estimate: Allow around 45 minutes
- Locality
- Memorial Square
Walks & outdoors
2 places
The Warren
A riverside walk to a Wye beauty spot used for picnicking, swimming or relaxing, and known as the Warren since its medieval rabbit-breeding days.
- Visit length
- Editorial estimate: Allow around 90 minutes
- Locality
- along the town-side bank of the Wye
Wye Valley Walk
A long-distance walk that passes through Hay, at the point where it and Offa's Dyke Path part company.
- Visit length
- Editorial estimate: Allow around 90 minutes
- Locality
- passing through the town
History & heritage
2 placesRichard Booth's Bookshop
A named stop among Hay's more than twenty bookshops, carrying the name of the bookseller who founded the book-town in the early 1960s.
- Visit length
- Editorial estimate: Allow around 75 minutes
- Locality
- on the corner
Hay Castle
A Grade I castle with a stone gate-tower and ringwork, a curtain wall reinforced around 1200 and a later Jacobean mansion; major restoration finished in 2022.
- Visit length
- Editorial estimate: Allow around 90 minutes
- Locality
- rising over the rooftops
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Three ways to explore Hay-on-Wye
Signature outings
The Book-Town Beginning
Browse Richard Booth's Bookshop, then carry the story into the town that grew from Booth's early-1960s bookselling venture.
Gate-Tower to Mansion
Trace Hay Castle's stone gate-tower and ringwork, its reinforced curtain wall and the later Jacobean mansion.
A Riverbank Warren
Follow about 1.5 miles of town-side riverbank upstream to the Warren for picnicking, swimming or time beside the water.
The town story
Hay-on-Wye Town Guide
Books, improbable royalty, old inns, market history and paths beside the Wye shape Hay's original Travel Fox story.
Books, Booth and a Kingdom
Richard Booth's Bookshop sits on the corner with a million-odd volumes' worth of competition down the street, because Hay has more than twenty bookshops for a town of 1,675 people. It calls itself the National Book Town of Wales, and the claim is earned: the old castle bookshop was once recognised by Guinness World Records as the largest second-hand bookshop in the world. You will not run out of things to read here. You may run out of shelf space at home.
The bookselling was one man's doing. Richard Booth founded the book-town in the early 1960s, out of the old fire station, and on 1 April 1977 he declared Hay an independent kingdom, crowned himself King Richard, Cœur du Livres, sold dukedoms and knighthoods, and appointed his horse Goldie as Prime Minister. The Welsh government issued a statement clarifying that Hay was not, in fact, independent.
Inns with Long Memories
The eating is good for a town this size. The Old Black Lion, a 17th-century coaching inn on Lion Street, holds two AA Rosettes and cooks changing British menus under chef Mark Turton — 21-day-matured local rib-eye, roast rack of lamb, crispy belly pork, pan-seared salmon, Sunday roasts. One room is named after Oliver Cromwell, who is said to have stayed while the Roundheads besieged the castle up the hill. There's live jazz in the Main Bar on Fridays.
The Three Tuns is reputed to be the oldest surviving house in Hay, a 16th-century timber-framed building now encased in stone, with a huge inglenook and a dog-leg staircase. The menu leans Italian and, in winter, comes to you in front of the fire. A former landlady, Lucy Powell, once admitted being too scared to report the men who turned up in 1963 in the aftermath of the Great Train Robbery.
Markets, Pies and the Parish Church
For pies, Kilverts does home-made ones daily and keeps up to five guest ales; the Hay Tap makes savoury pies on the premises. The Blue Boar is the family-owned one, two seating areas, a log fire in each. Hay Deli on Lion Street handles cheese, deli and whole foods, almost next door to Booth's. There are two butchers and a greengrocer, a Thursday street market, and a Saturday market that still runs in the old Cheese Market hall on Memorial Square, built in 1835 to sell dairy.
St Mary's has a church on the site since the 12th century; the tower is the only medieval part left, mostly 15th-century with a Victorian castellated top. Baldwin, Archbishop of Canterbury, preached here in 1188 while recruiting for the Third Crusade.
River Paths, Mountains and the Way In
The town sits on the Wye at the edge of the Brecon Beacons, with the Black Mountains walling off the southern view. Offa's Dyke Path and the Wye Valley Walk both pass through and part company here. The Warren, a mile and a half of riverbank upstream, has been a swimming and picnicking spot since it was a medieval rabbit warren. Hay Bluff and Twmpa rise behind for the more ambitious.
The nearest trains are 22 miles east at Hereford; the T14 bus runs there and to Brecon several times a day. Hay's own line closed in 1962, which leaves more room for the books.
Stay around Powys
Make a longer stay of it
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A guide with a point of view
Written from research. Edited for real journeys.
Use the Official site links for live practical details, then use this guide for context, ideas and room to explore.
Photography credits & licences
Third-party photographs are credited to their named creators and reused under the linked Creative Commons licence or public-domain dedication. Travel Fox stores an optimised local copy; the file-specific changes and any browser-applied display crop are disclosed below. Reused photographs link both to the Wikimedia Commons source record and to the declared source image; Travel Fox's own photographs carry no such record and are marked as ours. These image licences do not cover Travel Fox text, branding or page design.
- File:Hay Castle, Hay on Wye - panoramio.jpg — photograph by Adrian Farwell; Adrian Farwell. Source record on Wikimedia Commons. Declared source image. Licence: CC BY 3.0. File changes: Downloaded from Wikimedia Commons, resized to a maximum 1920px edge and encoded as an optimised JPEG. Display changes: Displayed with responsive CSS cropping.
- File:The Net House from Warren at Hay-on-Wye - geograph.org.uk - 2397233.jpg — photograph by Eric Pugh; The Net House from Warren at Hay-on-Wye by Eric Pugh. Source record on Wikimedia Commons. Declared source image. Licence: CC BY-SA 2.0. File changes: Downloaded from Wikimedia Commons, resized to a maximum 1920px edge and encoded as an optimised JPEG. Display changes: Displayed with responsive CSS cropping.
Sources
Every place on this page is checked against a published source. Each entry links the record we used and names who publishes it.
- Richard Booth's Bookshop — boothbooks.co.uk operator, sector body or destination organisation
- Hay Castle — haycastletrust.org operator, sector body or destination organisation
- The Old Black Lion — oldblacklion.co.uk operator, sector body or destination organisation record not machine-readable; publisher restricts automated access
- The Three Tuns — three-tuns.com operator, sector body or destination organisation
- Cheese Market Hall — haymarkets.co.uk operator, sector body or destination organisation
- St Mary's Parish Church — stmaryschurchhayonwye.co.uk operator, sector body or destination organisation
- The Warren — hay-on-wye.co.uk other published source
- Offa's Dyke Path — gov.uk statutory register or public authority
- Wye Valley Walk — wyevalleywalk.org operator, sector body or destination organisation