Former Red Lion inn (104 Abbey Street), including 106 Abbey Street, Accrington, Lancashire

Summary

Coaching inn and innkeeper’s house predating 1815, with an extension of 1822 and refronting before 1844 to the innkeeper’s house, both with later alterations and now (2020) offices.

Description

Coaching inn and innkeeper’s house predating 1815, the house with extension of 1822 and refronted before 1844, all now shop, offices and stores.

MATERIALS: buff sandstone, slate, roofing stone.

PLAN: double-pile, with single-bay house to the south of the three-bay inn, and western rear extension to the house.

EXTERIOR: prominently-sited at the junction of Abbey Street and Black Abbey Street, set back from a row of shops to the south. The front faces east and is of narrow-coursed, dressed stone. The inn is two-storey and three bays wide, and symmetrical with a central entrance. The angles have alternating quoins, windows have squared stone surrounds, and the eaves a moulded cornice. The west gable is coped. The ground-floor windows are modern, but the first-floor windows are late-C19 sashes with horns and central upper glazing bars. The entrance has an arched surround with capitals, and a keystone with an urn in relief; the fanlight and door are replacements. Set back at the right is a two-storey bowed outshut. To the left, separated by a vertical joint, is the house. This is of two storeys plus a cellar, and built of regularly-coursed stone. The moulded eaves cornice matches that of the inn itself. The top floor has a single opening at the left with wide stone lintel and sill. The middle floor has a paired opening with stone lintel, sill and mullion. The cellar has a well at the right with steps to a doorway with stone surround, and a low light at the left with stone lintel and sill.

The north and south walls of the house are obscured by the adjoining buildings. The north wall of the inn is gabled, with quoins at the left. At the right is a two-storey bowed outshut with a shallow, stone-slate roof. This has paired windows at each floor, with stone sills, lintels and mullions. The upper windows are six-over-six sashes; the lower windows are replacements. The gable-end has a ground-floor replacement window at the left with stone surround, and an arched entrance abutting the outshut. This has plainer capitals and keystone than the front entrance, and the door and fanlight here are also replacements. Above this are a small first-floor window and larger attic window, both replacements. Set back to the right is the north wall of a single-storey rear outshut. This has stone eaves-corbels and blocked cellar and ground-floor openings. It has a rock-faced stone plinth and horizontally-tooled upper courses. The angles are chamfered with run-out stops.

The west wall is rendered with small patches of random-coursed stone revealed. The first floor has a window at the right in the angle with the Jacob Lang room, with a stair window further to the left. Adjacent to this is a small first-floor window above a much wider sill, which matches that of the right-hand window. A gabled central single-storey outshut to 104 has a rock-faced stone plinth and horizontally-tooled upper courses. The angles are chamfered with run-out stops. It has a single window (partially-blocked), with a blocked cellar opening below. The gable is coped and has shaped kneelers. There are small windows either side of the outshut. At ground floor in the angle with the Jacob Lang room is a lean-to stone porch with blind west wall, battered plinth and a north doorway with stone lintel and jambs. This is blocked with random-coursed stone at low level, and breeze-blocks above.

The two-storey Jacob Lang room has a hipped slate roof. Its north wall is partially rendered but is of regularly-coursed, watershot stone. The eaves have five projecting stone gutter-corbels at the left, those further right being broken-off. At first-floor are a single opening at the left with stone sill and modern window, and at the right a doorway partly blocked in stone, and partly in brick, and a stone-blocked small opening with stone sill. Above the doorway is a stone plaque inscribed J & E/ Lang/ 1822 in good-quality lettering. Below the doorway, and angling down to the left, the coursed stone gives way to rubble, with a stone-blocked opening and three rendered panels. To the left is a ground-floor opening with modern door, and a rendered opening with stone sill. At the right, the angle with the west wall is rendered.

Returning at the right, the west wall is largely rendered but with exposed random-coursed walling at the base. The stone gutter-corbels survive as do the stone surrounds to two first-floor and one ground-floor openings, with modern timber windows upstairs and breeze-blocked downstairs. Also blocked is a smaller downstairs window with a wider sill. The angle at the right has alternating rock-faced quoins. Rainwater goods are plastic.

The quoins are also visible at the left of the south wall. Immediately to their right is a bay walled in breeze-blocks, flanked by breeze-block buttresses and with a modern roller shutter at ground level. A first-floor a modern timber window has a stone sill and lintel. To the right is another bay with a partly-rendered brick buttress to its right. This bay is mostly rendered but some random-rubble stone walling is visible at first-floor, and some random-coursed stone walling at ground level. A breeze-blocked ground-floor window has a stone sill, while a first-floor opening has stone sill and lintel, with a modern timber window. To the right the rear outshut of number 108 abuts this wall. Between it and the brick buttress is a stone lintel or sill. The right-hand bays have surviving stone gutter-corbels.

INTERIOR: the ground floor of the inn has been modernised but retains shutters in the bow window. The first floor retains a function room with shaped stone ceiling corbels. The stair window is arched internally. The stair is altered but retains a short length of original balustrade with turned newel, stick balusters and ramped handrail. A similar (altered) balustrade is found on the closed-string attic stair. The attic retains wide floorboards, lath-and-plaster walls and ceilings, hand-sawn purlins and a ledged plank door. The cellar was not inspected.

106 has been modernised internally. In the Jacob Lang room there are historic architraves, door and wall plaster in the cross-passage, but the stair is modern. The ceiling beams of the ground floor are historic but the joists and floor modern. The ground floor retains a niche with damaged stone shelves, and a stone stair to the doorway in the angle with 104. The upper room retains a vaulted plaster ceiling.

SUBSIDIARY FEATURES: the rear wall of 104 is abutted by a stone farmyard gatepost with pointed head. A small area of stone setts abuts the south-west corner of the Jacob Lang room.

History

Accrington’s development as a settlement of significant size began only in the early-C19; the population grew from 3,266 in 1811 to 10,374 by 1851. The development of land around Abbey Street and Black Abbey Street was at least in part facilitated by a building society of which Jacob Lang, Henry Ratcliffe, Edmund Oldham and Hartley Davy were trustees.

The Red Lion inn superseded an earlier Red Lion, which is shown on nearby Grange Lane on a plan of 1800. In 1802 the licence passed to Jacob Lang (senior, b1770 d1838). The current inn was almost certainly built via the building society, and surrendered to Jacob Lang in 1815. This 1815 surrender included the land on which stand numbers 106 and 108 Abbey Street. On the accompanying plan, number 106 was not distinguished from the inn, but had a slightly set-back frontage, while the footprint of number 108 was not delineated. A rear outshut was shown which overlapped the inn and number 106, and probably provided washing and toilet facilities. The site had formerly been Cowhouses farm, and also included were most of the rear yard, and the pre-existing barn on Black Abbey Street (numbers 1 and 3, part of National Heritage List for England – NHLE - entry 1471003).

However, contrary to the information contained in sales particulars of 1844, there was a second acquisition. A strip of land along the south side of the yard, the pre-existing storeyed barn on the west side of the yard, and the land on which (historical) number 1 Black Abbey Street was subsequently built, were all bought in 1827 by the building society (represented by the four trustees named above). The three other trustees surrendered this land to Jacob alone on 21 April 1828, finally consolidating the inn complex. The 1827 plan shows that the rear extension known as the Jacob Lang room (and dated 1822) had replaced the earlier rear outshut. This purchase regularised the encroachment by the Jacob Lang room onto land which wasn’t included in the original purchase.

Ainsworth and Crossley state that in 1815 the coach service from Clitheroe to Manchester first passed through Accrington, and the Red Lion became Accrington’s principal coaching house. They also state that the two barns listed under NHLE 1471003 were used as stables and coach houses. Directories appear to show that in 1818 reaching Accrington required changing coaches at Bury, but that in 1821 Accrington was probably a stop on two services from Manchester (to Settle and Skipton), and one from Bury to Skipton. The Red Lion is the inn named in Baines’ directory of 1824 as providing the only listed service from Accrington (six days a week, as a stop between Clitheroe and Manchester) and probably needed overnight stabling for two teams of four horses. It was one of only two named coaching inns for Accrington in Pigot and Dean’s directory for 1824 and 1825 (published in 1824 and probably compiled after Baines’). That directory shows that while the Black Horse was now serving the ‘Traveller’ on the Clitheroe to Manchester route, the Red Lion had become the terminus for a service on four days a week between Accrington and Manchester (named as both the Union and the Commercial). This would have required space for storing a coach overnight, as well as for a spare which was usually kept at either end of a route. The Red Lion was also the departure point for five of six named carriers from Accrington, who between them operated from here four days a week.

There appears to have followed a downturn in the coaching services. Pigot’s national commercial directory of 1828 shows that the Traveller was operating six days a week, but using both the Red Lion and the White Swan (opposite). The same company’s directory of Manchester and Salford of 1829 does not name the Traveller, but lists the Dart service from Manchester to Clitheroe via Accrington, and a service two days per week to Foxhill Bank via Accrington. It is not known which inns these used, but in 1834 the Dart was using the Red Lion. The Red Lion and the Black Horse each received a morning and evening coach between Blackburn and Manchester (the Highflyer and the Rocket, respectively) and between Clitheroe and Manchester (the Dart and the William IV). In addition the Red Lion received a coach (the Commercial) morning and evening en route between Clitheroe and Manchester, three days a week. In 1845, the Red Lion was still receiving three of seven twice-daily coaches passing through Accrington; the Perseverance (Blackburn), the William IV (Clitheroe) and the Trafalgar (Blackburn). By 1848, as the coaching era was drawn to a close by the arrival of the East Lancashire Railway, services no longer called at the Red Lion, but did still call at three other inns (these services had also disappeared by 1850). Carriers were still departing from the Red Lion four days a week in 1848, however.

The two-storey bow-fronted bay on Black Abbey Street has misaligned coursing with the main building, indicating it is an addition. The 1815 deeds plan shows an irregularly-shaped outshut in this location which might have been a predecessor. Ainsworth states that it predates the two similar bays of the Warner Arms (NHLE 1072761), which was built around 1827, and it was probably added to the inn as the coaching business expanded, serving a waiting or coffee room and possibly a lodging room for coach travellers. Its stone-tile roof suggests that the main inn originally had the same, but has had the covering replaced. A historic photograph shows the inn with stacks on both gables, plus another tall stack which appears to have served the Jacob Lang room, all of which have now been removed. The coronation of George IV was celebrated in 1821 with fifty gentlemen dining in the first-floor room of the inn, which suggests that the single large room fronting Abbey Street is original, although this has now also been opened out into a rear room.

In 1822, the Jacob Lang room was built, with a datestone with the initials of Jacob Lang and his wife, Ellen (not to be confused with Jacob Lang, junior, b1804 d1854 and his sister Ellen, who together with their sister Elizabeth took over from Jacob senior before or at his death in 1838). The use of watershot stone for the north face, except where the stone steps concealed it and random-coursed rubble was used, strongly suggests that this two-storey outshut was built in a single phase. The garden, shown by deeds to have been occupied by Jacob Lang by 1827, lay immediately to the south, accessed by a ground-floor passageway through the extension, close to the rear wall of number 106. By 1827 an outshut appears to have been built against the west wall of the extension. The 1892 Town Plan suggests that it might have been four looseboxes. This outshut was demolished between the surveys for the 1893 and the 1912 1:2,500 OS maps. The extant room beneath the assembly room might have included domestic services for the inn, but might also have had uses related to the stable outshut, such as an ostler’s office and equipment store. From 1829 the meeting room was used as a schoolroom by My Goyder, the Swedenborgian minister of the New Jerusalem chapel opposite. A school was built for the chapel in 1836, and this use presumably ceased then. The room was also used as a concert and ballroom for Queen Victoria’s coronation in 1838, and for meetings of the local branch of the Anti-Corn Law League from 1842.

Much of the ground floor of the inn has been modernised. The rear meeting room has been altered but retains its vaulted ceiling above a modern insertion. In the 1980s a failed attempt at arson resulted in structural damage to the south-west corner of the extension which was largely repaired in breeze-blocks. The stone steps to the first-floor doorway on the north wall (described in the original List entry as altered) have been removed. Internally a stair now blocks the north end of the passageway. An outshut was added to the rear of the inn, north of the Jacob Lang room, in the second half of the C19, and probably provided improved access to the inn’s cellar.

Number 106 Abbey Street seems likely to have been built as the innkeeper’s house, more or less contemporary with the inn. The 1815 and 1827 deeds plans show the house as part of the inn, although the 1815 plan shows it slightly set back and the 1827 plan is inconclusive; the frontage might have been rebuilt by then to remedy the loss of light from the rear, but was definitely rebuilt before 1844. The 1829 rental survey for the township of New Accrington also only lists the inn and one other adjacent property belonging to Jacob Lang. Since Lang also owned number 108, this is presumably the adjacent property (rented to William Hill, a shopkeeper or dealer in sundries), and this indicates that number 106 was considered part of the inn. By 1861, when the census first includes street numbers, there is no entry for 106, confirming it was included within the inn. The interior has been modernised and a doorway has been knocked through to 108.

Reasons for Listing

The former Red Lion inn (104 Abbey Street), including 106 Abbey Street, Accrington, a coaching inn and innkeeper’s house predating 1815, with extension of 1822 and refronting before 1844 to the innkeeper’s house, both with later alterations and now offices, are listed at Grade II for the following principal reasons:

Architectural interest:
* dating from before 1815 and retaining a significant proportion of the original fabric;
* enhanced by the survival of the innkeeper’s house at number 106 (refronted before 1844 with good quality stonework);
* further enhanced with a meeting-room extension to the house, with decorative datestone of 1822, and retaining some historic internal fabric;
* rarity as a surviving coaching inn, in particular a purpose-built example of the turnpike era in Lancashire and the north-west.

Group value:
* with a strong visual and former functional relationship with the listed former barns adjoining the rear yard.

External Links

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