Lost Buildings: The Lion Hotel

This is a brief edited version of a report was undertaken as part of the Historic Kidderminster Project. The Lion Hotel commanded an imposing site at the top of the High Street. For much of its history it was probably Kidderminster’s most important inn. Until 1898 it was owned by the Lords of the Manor, first the Foleys and later the Earls of Dudley.

It is claimed that the hotel dated back to the 16 th century. The earliest known record is from 1699 when Francis Evans, secretary to the Bishop of Worcester wrote in his diary that the Bishop had ‘treated his clergy with a dinner at Ye Lyon’.

In its early years it was known as the Lion Inn. The novelist, Mrs Sherwood, stayed there when four years old c1779, when her host was a Mr Hall. She commented wryly; “Had I never seen Kidderminster since that time, I should have imagined that the Lion Inn was as large as the Colosseum at Rome, and the street at the end of which it stands as magnificent as the Strada Balbi at Genoa”.

In 1929 considerable alterations were undertaken, and by the end of the year the building was ready for the National Provident Bank to take that part of the hotel guarded by the lion over the portico entrance.

By the 1960’s the hotel had seen better days and in December 1962 the Lion Hotel was sold to Woolworths to make way for a new superstore. It was too old and uneconomical to run. It was closed on 28 th July 1963, and there was a civic send off to the much loved hostelry. Demolition had to wait at least four years. There was an old legend that the stone lion came alive after midnight to scare late night revellers scurrying home. It was a shame the lion couldn’t have seen off a few town planners and property developers while he was at it.

The Lion Hotel for sale in 1921.

Authors: John Combe/Nigel Gilbert; Historic Kidderminster Project Ref: 106

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