I was fascinated to read in the Sunday Times Culture section yesterday that a new book has been written about the art historian Sir Nikolaus Pevsner and it brought back memories of his famous comments about The Lion Hotel.
The architectural scholar and writers, Sir Nikolaus Pevsner (pictured below) and John Newman, had described the Shrewsbury hotel ballroom in their Building of England county series as “an amazing room, of priceless value to the student and lover of art, and to see it alone is well worth a pilgrimage to The Lion”.
The series of 46 books took more than 23 years to write.
The authors said the 18th century Assembly Room, or Ballroom (pictured below by Richard Bishop), is “a wonderfully complete example of mid-Georgian suite of rooms for public entertainment,” which have hardly changed over the centuries.
Visitors today can still see the same delicate colouring on the walls and the emblematic figures of Music and Dancing painted on the door panels, the two music galleries, the chandeliers and the moulded plaster decorations in the Robert Adam style where many people have enjoyed the dancing and balls there.
They include Prince William who later became King William IV and who visited the hotel in 1803.
The mammoth new biography about Pevsner, who died in 1983 aged 81, has been written by Susie Harries, who has spent 20 years on her work looking at previously unseen private papers and personal diaries.
The 928-page Nikolaus Pevsner: The Life by Susie Harries is published by Chatto & Windus, price £30.
If you would like to read more about the Ballroom in Four Centuries at The Lion Hotel, Shrewsbury, email John@jbutterworth.plus.com
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