The Red Lion Hotel

WELLS

ST5445 MARKET PLACE 662-1/7/142 (South side) 12/11/53 No.2 The Red Lion Hotel

GV II

The Red Lion Hotel also extends above Nos 1 and 3, High Street (qv). Hotel, with shop to part of ground floor. C17 and early C18. Brick with stone dressings, all colourwashed, Welsh slate roof behind parapet, brick chimney stacks. PLAN: front range, originally with a single large room to each storey, is entered at the side from the throughway under No.1, High Street; long narrow wing to rear right has a narrow courtyard on the E side. EXTERIOR: 3 storeys. 2 bays. Doulting ashlar stone facade of C20 to ground floor, with plinth, plain fascia and cornice, framing two 16-pane recessed bow windows with a pair of glazed doors to the right. Above, the shallow canted bay windows extend full height to the parapet, containing plain sash windows, the centre units being 4-pane with timber cornice mouldings over each window, then a bold cornice under a shallow parapet, all following the line of the bays below. Side elevation to courtyard modified, rendered with C20 timber casement windows, 3 storeys then 2 storeys with pantiled roof, ending at south end of site with a garage building which extends across whole site. INTERIOR: the ground floor extensively modified in C20; the front part is a shop, behind this the kitchen and a long dining room, which is in 7 bays with rough transverse beams, and a blocked window in the former end wall. At first floor are 2 rooms, formerly one, with a plaster cornice having egg-and-dart and vine-leaf enrichments, and room 2 has a good C18 moulded architrave to the bay window. At first floor the front range has no early detail. The wing has a pantile roof, and the roof trusses, possibly of the C17, have propped principals, but this not fully inspected. A C17 door in 2 wide planks and a low canted head gives access to the upper level of the stair.

Listing NGR: ST5500645737