Red Lion Hotel

The Red Lion Hotel is a complex of late 19th and Edwardian buildings situated on the corner of Castle and George Streets. The main building is in a florid Edwardian style, with a stucco facade and a hipped roof covered in Welsh slate. It has two storeys and a panelled parapet divided into bays by plain pilasters, with a heavy moulded dentil eaves course. Three window bays face Castle Street and four face George Street, with a rounded corner bay marking the intersection. The seven first-floor windows are sashes with slightly arched heads, architrave surrounds, keystones, and quoins. Corinthian pilasters separate the bays, decorated with a single lozenge motif. A moulded red lion rampant adorns the corner bay. The ground floor has a continuous cornice and fascia with tall windows separated by pilasters decorated with a circle. Above the corner window is a segmental pediment with a carved flower and leaf design. A carriage entrance on the George Street side opens into the courtyard of the earlier coaching inn, flanked by lower buildings that have been substantially altered and are of colourwashed brick and render with old clay tile roofs.

Adjacent to the main Edwardian frontage on Castle Street is a range of buildings constructed of Luton grey bricks with stone dressings. A low two-storey range has three sash windows with glazing bars and gauged brick heads to each storey. A taller two-storey wing is topped by a triangular pediment, featuring two first-floor sash windows and a cill band. Ground-floor casements are flanked by plain brick pilasters with decorated stone pediments above the capitals. A cornice above the windows opens into a semi-circular arch above the central one, which is filled with a scallop pattern and a cartouche bearing the date 1881.

Adjoining the Edwardian section on the George Street frontage is a delicately detailed mid-Victorian building, now of colourwashed brick with a Welsh slate roof behind plain parapets. This building is three storeys high, with three sash windows with glazing bars and gauged brick heads on both the first and second floors. The ground floor has a doorway with a decorated fanlight set within a surround of delicate fluted pilasters, an entablature, a dentil frieze, and a cornice. This window is similarly pilastered, with a decorated frieze above the capitals. A deep entablature and a shallow cornice top the doorway.