Inocuous paragraph helped historians

On this day 234 years ago an innocuous paragraph appeared in the Shrewsbury Chronicle.

The report was only a few lines but it proved vital to local historians tracing the story of The Lion Hotel.

Tucked away on page three in the middle of a column underneath the imaginative headline, Shrewsbury, Nov 29, the paper reported in its 1777 edition: “Last week was erected, over the new and elegant Assembly Room, at the Lion Inn in this town, on a beautiful pedestal, decorated with the arms of John Ashby Esq., a highly finished statue of a lion, larger than life, executed by Mr John Nelson, statuary carver, of this place.

“This statue, and another of the same size and elegance, do great credit we think to the artist, as well as to the generous and public-spirited employer.”

That is the entire Chronicle story. But it helps local historians to credit John Nelson as the craftsman responsible for the statues and to show the owner of the hotel at that time was the Shrewsbury solicitor John Ashby (1722-1779), who was Mayor of Shrewsbury and town clerk from 1767 until his death 12 years later.

Incidentally, both the lions can still be seen today, although the rear lion only re-emerged in 1962 after a hotel extension was built.

Pictured below is William Braddock, a local decorator, putting the new gold leaf on the lion over the hotel front door on April 29, 1953.

Shrewsbury carpenter and joiner William Haycock, who rebuilt the Lion, said that Ashby bought the premises, described in the deeds as the ‘Red Lion’, at auction in August 1775 from Sir Thomas Jones, of Stanley Hall, near Bridgnorth. And it was Ashby who renamed it the Lion.

However, the history of the hotel, or the Lion site, goes back much further.

Historian Bill Champion says the first recorded owner of the Red Lion was Richard Mytton Esq. (c. 1500-1591) who sold it in May 1553 to the sitting tenant Richard Owen, alias Barber, for £20 and a fixed fee-farm rent of 12 shillings (60p) per year.

Selling in fee-farm was an old type of conveyance whereby the vendor would sell the freehold, but retain a fixed annual rent called a ‘fee-farm’.

However, there is a conversation recorded ‘at the sign of the Lion’ in 1537 between Nicholas Holte; John Barber, Richard Owen’s father; and Thomas Cowper, for many years the town clerk of the borough.

They were discussing rumours that that the King (Henry VIII) was planning to halve the number of churches, as part of the English Reformation, and to have only one chalice in each church. 

Mr Champion says that, although the reference is only to the Lion, there is no doubt that the Red Lion is meant.

He further believes the present hotel site had belonged since 1460, and probably earlier, to the Myttons, one of the most famous Shropshire families who made their fortunes in the 14^th century in the wool trade.

There are more details about the story of the hotel in Four Centuries at The Lion Hotel.

To buy a signed copy for the special Christmas price of £6, including postage within the UK, email John@jbutterworth.plus.com