Over the last four centuries, life has gone full circle at The Lion Hotel. In 1780, the new independent owner Robert Lawrence took over the hotel and restored it to its former glory.
In 2006, independent owner Howard Astbury (pictured below by Richard Bishop) bought the hotel and is now restoring it as a reminder of its glorious past.
Running inns and hotels is in Howard’s blood. Born in 1944 in Bridgnorth, he was brought up in the Clee Hills where his parents ran the Old Miners’ Arms at Hopton Bank in south Shropshire.
He trained as an electrical engineer for the National Coal Board at the nearby Highley Colliery. But 18 months after he qualified, the colliery was closed, so Howard decided to go into the hotel industry.
He joined Grand Metropolitan Hotels as a trainee running the Harte and Garter in Windsor. In 1976, he bought his first hotel, the Old Bell in Warminster, a historic coaching inn, followed by the Ilsington Country House Hotel on the edge of Dartmoor in 1992 and then in 2001, the modern Exeter Court Hotel in Devon.
But his heart lay in Shropshire and in historic hotels, so when The Lion Hotel came on the market in 2006, he decided to buy it from the Regal Hotel Group.
“I want to ensure The Lion is known for fine dining, fine service and a fine stay and is up with other top hotels such as The Chester Grosvenor,” said Howard.
Howard’s dream is that it may again be said of The Lion, as is it was in the Shrewsbury Chronicle when it was put up for sale in 1817, “No house upon any of the great roads between Holyhead, Bath, Cheltenham, Bristol, Liverpool, Manchester, North and South Wales stands in higher estimation (than The Lion) having a constant influx of the first families in the kingdom.”
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