The Old Exeter Inn in Ashburton, Devon, sits at the historic crossroads where the Ancient Mariners’ Way intersects the main road between Exeter and Plymouth. On the evening of 19 July 1603, Sir Walter Raleigh — courtier, poet, Lord Warden of the Stannaries, and the visionary who named Virginia and funded the Roanoke colonies — sat in its front room when royal officers arrived with a warrant for high treason. Raleigh calmly finished his ale, raised his tankard in salute, and surrendered with supreme dignity.

It is a missing first chapter of American history. Though Raleigh never set foot on mainland North America, he directed the birth of English settlement from afar. Our American hosts trace the living line from this 12th-century Tudor waystation directly across the Atlantic to Roanoke Island, Raleigh (North Carolina), and the Raleigh Tavern in Williamsburg, Virginia — where America’s Founding Fathers later met under a lead bust of his head.

Our hosts unpack the tragic 1618 Orinoco expedition, the loss of his eldest son Wat, his return as a free man, and his second arrest at the exact same pub — landing on a provocative question for listeners back home: is “Founding Father” actually too small a title for a Devon boy who made modern America possible?

Twenty-two minutes. Four hundred years of transatlantic drama. Pull up a stool and press play.

The Old Exeter Inn in Ashburton, Devon, is the oldest freehouse in the world. It has been trading in the same building since 1130 — sixty-four years after the Norman Conquest, five centuries before the Mayflower sailed. Horses were still being led through the inside of the bar as recently as 1913.

It’s also, quietly, an American landmark. In 1603, Sir Walter Raleigh — the Devon man who founded England’s first American colonies, named Virginia for his Queen, and gave North Carolina’s capital its name — was arrested for treason in one of its small dark rooms and taken to the Tower of London.

Our hosts dig into 900 years of continuous trade, Drake and Raleigh, ghost stories and ale tastings — and land on an awkward question for the modern hospitality industry: has this inn survived nine centuries precisely because it refused to modernise?

Twenty minutes. Nine hundred years. Pour something proper and press play.