The Red Lion in Llandovery was probably built as a town house in the early C18 and was first noted as the Red Lion in 1810. In the C19 it was owned by the Saunders Davies estate, but was sold in 1884 and was subsequently owned and run by the Rees family until its closure c2017. Interior detail belongs mainly to the late C19 or early C20. From that time the building was used mostly as a private house and the public house was confined to a single room, with a tap room behind it.

Instead of having a physical bar, beer was drawn by gravity and dispensed from barrels in the tap room and served through a hatch, a once common arrangement in Wales. The tap room was a C19 addition at the rear, and an adjacent kitchen was added in a lean-to against the adjoining No 4 Market Square (11006), which was previously also owned by the Rees family, Both rear additions are shown on the 1887 and 1907 Ordnance Survey maps, although the building is not marked as a public house. As late as the 1970s the front was entirely roughcast, with the words Red Lion in smooth render in relief, but the render was subsequently partly stripped to leave the stonework exposed in the upper storey.

A 3-bay public house of 2 storeys and attic, of rubble stone under a steep slate roof and external stacks with drip stones. The front is rendered in the lower storey, with rubble-stone exposed in the upper storey, below a rendered eaves band. There is a simple C19 slate veranda across the breadth of the front, on 6 cast-iron columns. The central doorway has a broad 2-panel door.

The ground floor has an entrance hall, with tiled floor and stairs at the rear, and rooms right and left with plain cross beams, mostly papered over. The bar is on the right-hand side of the entrance hall. This is simply fitted with a boarded wainscot and wood surround to the fireplace. In the rear wall is a hatch and a split door in a boarded partition to the tap room. Fixed to the back wall of the tap room is a bench on which the barrels were placed. Later shelving was for bottles. From the tap room is access to a rear kitchen, which a red and black tile floor. The full-height dog-leg stairs has turned balusters and square newels. The first-floor room over the parlour has a fielded-panel door and fireplace in a wood surround. The attic room above it has a C19 boarded door. The first-floor room over the bar retains a cast-iron fireplace in a wood surround.

The building is listed grade II* for its architectural interest as an C18 house retaining early external character and detail and which is of special social-historic interest for its pub interior, a very rare survival of the kind of simple arrangement for serving beer that was once common in Wales.

References:

Cadw report amendment, dated 26 November 2020.

1. A.T. Arber-Cooke, Pages from the history of Llandovery, 1994, 2, pp 121-2, 444.