Star and Garter Hotel

The Star and Garter has 5 beautiful bedrooms and is unique in every way. Real home-made food, Premium Beers and Cocktails and a plethora of Gin and Spirits choices.

The Hotel is a Magnificent Georgian Mansion and stands proud in the heart of the Royal Burgh of Linlithgow, birthplace of Mary, Queen of Scots. The original house boasted six bedrooms and a stately ballroom but, in the 1840s, it was transformed into a Public House. An 1847 invoice shows is belonging to James Burleigh who, in addition to running the “Star and Garter Hotel”, also hired out Gigs, Droskies (low, four-wheeled carriages), and Post Horses.

The horses would have been kept in stables – clearly marked on the mid 19th century OS map. Some of the steeds would have been used to pull the Edinburgh to Linlithgow Post Chaise which would use the Star and Garter as a coaching inn. The hostelry was also in an excellent position to accommodate travellers using the new Edinburgh to Glasgow railway which, from the year 1842, passes right above the building. “The Star and Garter” in fact would have been an archetypal railway hotel – in the style of many across the country at that time.

In the 1860s, the building fell into the hands of the Whitten family. Innkeeper John Whitten is buried beneath the elaborate headstone in the graveyard of St Michael’s Church.