Penybont Inn 1755 - 1840

We will probably never know when an inn was first established near the old ford over the river Ithon known as Rhyd-y-Cleifion, but in all probability the inn pre-dates the first known bridge and the consequent change of name to Penybont. The settlement on the west side of the river, on a pleasant clearing sheltered from the north by a steep bank and open to the south, may well date back to the period of Roman occupation and may have been near the site of a river crossing on the trackway running from Castell Collen to Leintwardine. We can be confident that this location was occupied by a few settlers at least from the medieval period. Long before either Penybont Hall or the Mansion on the bank known as the Court were built, a field named Cae Cleifion (the field of the wounded) was the site of a small settlement. We may presume that among the buildings erected there was an inn. No description of or reference to such a building has survived earlier than the beginning of the eighteenth century and we have to content ourselves with a few clues which may suggest that an inn did exist here before that time.

 
In 1700 Edward Lhuyd’s Parochalia says that in the parish of Llanbadarn Fawr there is ‘no town or village. One or two houses by the church. A parsonage. Four hamlets. One township’. No mention of an Inn. But in 1714 the parish overseers of Cefnllys held meetings at ‘Bridgend’. If this is a reference to Penybont then such meetings would probably have been held at a public building and probably the inn. In 1746 a Shropshire lawyer, returning from Ye Wells (Llandrindod) ‘Rode by Llanbadarn and baited at Penabont, eating oatcakes, very thin, 16 in a India meter’. Again, this suggests that an old Inn was already in existence at Penybont. The fact that when later the Inn is first mentioned it is called ‘The New Inn’ could suggest that it was then a replacement for a very much older building.

 
The building of the New Inn probably took place in 1755. Our reason for this assumption is a statement by Thomas Rees in his Beauties of England and Wales published in 1815 that ‘At Penybont is a very respectable inn built by the late Mr. J. Price of this place who about the same time erected an excellent mansion for himself’. The building of the mansion (Penybont Hall) can be confidently dated to 1755. An inscribed keystone with John Price’s name and the date 1755 was included in the fabric of Penybont Hall until that part of the building was taken down in 1930 and the stone has survived (picture below). We can therefore assume that it was ‘about the same time’ that the old inn on the west bank of the Ithon near the present road bridge was built (or re-built) and named the New Inn by the local shop keeper John Price.



John Price (1723 – 1798) made a fortune from the shop in the village which he inherited from his father, bought and re-built the Inn, started one of Wales’s earliest banks in Penybont and built Penybont Hall as his private residence. When he died on 1798 his estate passed to his only surviving daughter who married into the wealthy Severn family who were later to give their name to the Inn.

 
The Inn was built on land which was part of Dolau Jenkin farm which had been purchased by John Price from Thomas Jones of Pencerrig and formerly of Trefonnen whose family had owned the farm at least since 1713. In the 1839 Parish Tithe Map two fields under the bank are described as Cae Cleifion and Stable Meadow. This was the site of the Inn and stables and probably some other buildings and dwellings. At that time the turnpike road ran along the line of the driveway to Penybont Hall until a new road was built in 1825, and this road was further re-aligned and raised when a new bridge was built in 1989. The old Inn probably stood somewhere where the main road is today and opposite the junction into Cefnllys lane.

 
John Price probably ran the Inn himself from 1755 to 1770. On March 21st 1771 a notice appeared in the Hereford Journal announcing that ‘The New Inn in Penybont is to be let and entered upon immediately’. The new tenant was a Mr. John Jones. He announces his arrival in the same paper on June 13th 1771: ‘John Jones begs leave to acquaint the public that he has taken the New Inn at Penybont and fitted it up in a genteel and commodious manner for the reception of those Ladies and Gentlemen who will please to honour him with their company, having laid in a fresh assortment of neat Wines, Brandy, Rum, etc., together with fine rich Cordials, where he hopes for the favour of those Ladies and gentlemen travelling that road, Penybont being pleasantly situated in the centre of the County of Radnor, and near Llandrindod Wells, on the bank of the river Ithon. An assiduous endeavour to please will entirely regulate the conduct of, Ladies and Gentlemen, Your most Humble Servant, John Jones.’ The advertisement continues: ‘A main of cocks to fight at the above Place. To fight 21 in the main. And to weigh on Wednesday 3 July and fight the following day’.

 
This was the period when the hotel on the site of Llandrindod Hall near Llandrindod Old Church was gaining a reputation for high living and the Inn at Penybont may have suffered from the same excesses. In May 1772 the Hereford Journal names the proprietor of Penybont Inn, John Jones, ‘late of Penybont in the parish of Llanbadarn Fawr’, among those who are to be ‘confined in the County Goal in Presteigne as an insolvent debtor’. John Price lost no time in advertising for a replacement. Indeed in April and May 1772 advertisements appear in the Hereford Journal seeking a tenant for the shop as well as the Inn. The advertisement for the Inn reads: ‘To be lett, in the same village a good Inn, lately rebuilt and furnished in an elegant manner, fit for the accommodation of gentlemen, and has hitherto been well accustomed. There is a turnpike road by the door. Any person that is capable of the publick business and obliging will be sure to meet encouragement. No person need apply unless his character and circumstances will bear a strict enquiry. Apply to John Price at Penybont. To be lett at any time twixt this and Michaelmas next.’

 
The description of the Inn in 1772 as ‘lately rebuilt’ and the desirability of a fresh start after the earlier difficulties could mean that it was at this time that the New Inn was renamed The Golden Fleece. The first use of this new name we have found is in a notice in the Hereford Journal in May 1783. This announces a sale to be held ‘At the Golden Fleece in Penybont of a tenement called Swydd in Llandegley with extensive and unlimited right of common on the Forest of Radnor, Rhos Swydd and Coed Swydd.’. From this date until about 1814 the inn is usually referred to as The Fleece.

 
The most important development in this period is the improvement in road and transport systems brought about by the establishing of the Radnorshire Turnpike Trust in 1767. Penybont is first mentioned as a ‘post town’ in 1784 and by 1807 had become a staging post where mails arrived by coach three days a week and where horses were changed for the next stage of the journey to Rhayader in the one direction and New Radnor in the other. The Fleece grew to meet the new demand with extra stables and an increased accommodation and the innkeeper acted as postmaster for Penybont at least from 1807. The earliest surviving postmark for Penybont is for 1790 and this was almost certainly marked at the Inn. The role of Innkeeper and Postmaster appears to have been combined until 1891 when Mr Wilding and Mr Boulter occupied the two positions respectively. Earlier Innkeepers/Post Masters included:- Mr D Davies (1807), Mr J Griffiths (1818) and Mr Parton (1828).

 
In about 1814 the name of the inn was changed to The Severn Arms. John Price’s only surviving daughter Mary Ann Price had married John Cheesment Severn in 1811. By 1814 their first child had been born and in 1815 Mrs Severn would celebrate her 21st birthday with an ox roasting and other village celebrations. It seemed natural that the village inn should now carry the name of its owner and the most important family in the village. At about this time Llandegley inn was being renamed the Burton Arms (after Edward Burton of Fronlace) and the Walsh Arms at Llanddewi was later named after the major landowner of that parish.

 
No detailed description of the inn exists but it is described as ‘respectable’, ‘superior’ and ‘excellent’ in travellers’ guides of the period. As we have seen, Thomas Rees in his ‘Beauties of England and Wales’ in 1815 spoke of ‘…a respectable inn’. J T Llewellyn Pritchard of Builth’s Cambria Balnea published in 1825 says: ‘on the left side of the road stands the Severn Arms and Post Office, a superior looking tenement where the coaches change horses. It is kept by Mr Parton.’ Samuel Lewis in his Topographical Dictionary of Wales published in 1833 says: ‘The village of Penybont consists of about a dozen houses, one of them an excellent inn’.

 
In 1825 Mr Severn paid for a new turnpike road to bypass the Hall and later purchased the mansion called The Court on the bank behind the inn which he demolished probably to ensure greater privacy for the Hall. The same reason may have motivated the rebuilding of the inn itself on a new site at the other end of the village, or it may have been because the old site was on low ground and near the river. In May 1839 the Churchwardens of Llanbadarn Fawr ‘reduced the ratable value on Penybont Publick house been taken down’. In 1840 the Revised Cambrian Travellers’ Guide reports: ‘a very large and commodious new inn is nearly completed in the Elizabethan style called the Severn Arms Hotel’. This is the first use of the name Severn Arms Hotel and the hotel we know today is substantially this building built in 1840 and which has stood on this site for 165 years.