White Lion public house

White Lion public house

A public house of the early nineteenth century with alterations dating to the 1920s.

The building is constructed of brick with painted scored render, except to the rear where soft red brick in English Garden Wall bond is exposed, with a grey slate roof. It is a two-storey linear building four bays wide, with single-storey rear outshuts.

The public house is situated at a crossroads next to the former Westhoughton Town Hall. The front elevation faces onto Market Street and has four evenly spaced windows at first floor level. Wider windows sit beneath these at ground floor, except the left-hand window which is offset to the left and largely boarded over. The first-floor windows are timber casements, while the ground floor has fixed timber windows with metal captive-opening true-leaded upper lights and etched lower lights. Between windows 2 and 3, and between windows 3 and 4, there are timber panelled doors with stone thresholds. Above the right-hand entrance is a raised render panel, eared at the corners, with raised lettering reading 'WHITE LION HOTEL'. A painted projecting sign hangs above the left-hand entrance. At the right is a plaque commemorating a Luddite attack of 1812 on a mill opposite. Brick chimney stacks sit between windows 1 and 2 and between windows 2 and 3, with a double-width stack aligned with window 4; all stacks are capped. The eaves project with boarded soffits and PVC box guttering.

The left-hand gable has painted timber bargeboards and is blank except for a door at the left. The rear elevation of soft red brick shows five courses of stretchers between header courses, with some irregular vertical joints and later bricks. Single-storey outshuts project at the right and left; the right-hand one is a lean-to, while the left is gabled.

The right-hand gable has painted timber bargeboards and, to the right, one window at each floor of the same type as the front elevation. To the left is a painted timber sign depicting a white lion and the brewery crest, with the pub's name in applied letters.

Interior

An entrance lobby leads into a wider drinking lobby. To the left is the servery, the centrepiece of the pub, which has complete etched rising-sash screens opening onto the drinking lobby, vaults, and snug. The square posts between the screens are treated as columns with neo-Classical detailing, and the cornice is heavily moulded. The lobby dados and the length of the servery counterfront are tiled in a blue-grey edge with buff panels on a cream background, separated by vertical borders of cream with a patterned tile at the top in a vermilion colour typical of Pilkington's products.

From the drinking lobby, a door to the left leads into the vault, which runs along the building and contains the longest bar counter, curved at the left with matching curved servery screens. Beyond the bar is a 1920s tiled corner fireplace with wood surround featuring a lion's head motif. A disused central entrance lobby is also present. A door at the west end gives access to a corridor linking to the outside seating area and a room now used for stock, which has an Edwardian fireplace with an Art Nouveau grate. This corridor also connects to the snug behind the servery, known as the 'ugly' room, which has another curved section of counter with screens and a fireplace with wood surround, tiling including a country scene with plough-horses, and a grate. Across the drinking lobby is an opened-up darts room, and to the right is the 'John Hyde Suite', named after a former local.

Fixed seating lines the walls except in the darts room. Bell pushes are present in all rooms, unusually in the vaults, for table service which operated right up to the 1970s. Original wooden doors have etched glass and Art Nouveau brassware. Embossed ceiling wallpaper is present throughout the ground floor, and a polished water heater, probably EPNS, sits on the counter top.

The 1920s tiling also lines the stair to the manager's accommodation. The manager's office at the top of the stair borrows light from the stair window via a part-glazed door and window, presently covered, onto the landing. A room overlooking the stair also receives light in this manner. The manager's accommodation contains fireplaces and other features.