Birmingham, West Midlands
Brianboru100, CC BY-SA 3.0
Grade II*-listed, 1901, James and Lister Lea
The former Red Lion Public House was built by local architects James and Lister Lea in 1901, on the site of an earlier pub with the same name. The three-storey building, with a brick and two-tone terracotta facade, is a noted work of Free Renaissance architecture and an unusual example of its type. It makes a distinctive contribution to the street scene and, though it was threatened with demolition in the 1980s as part of a road improvement scheme, it survives largely intact.
Internally, features of interest including blue and yellow Minton tiles to the walls, an elaborate bar back combining mirrored glass with mahogany joinery, and floor-to-ceiling polished wood panelling in the smaller rooms. The plan form was designed to be legible from the front elevation, and consists of a tiled entrance hall and staircase to the far right of the building, a public bar running the total length of the the frontage, and a tiled passage on the left leading to the smoking and coffee rooms.
The pub has continued in its original use for more than one hundred years, and yet, though it remained popular with the local community, rising costs and changing market conditions meant that it was forced to close last year. Following calls from our Birmingham Group, the city council has taken action to ensure that a full record of the pub has been made, to make urgent repairs to its material fabric, and to press for adequate security for the site, but its future remains uncertain. In light of the fate of several other listed pubs in the local area, many of which have been closed and subsequently vandalised and destroyed, we feel that the Red Lion cannot be reopened soon enough.
Status Update / March 2026
The building was sold to a video production company in 2016, and there was a strong local feeling that the building would be redeveloped, but unfortunately nothing has happened since. The pub has suffered from a lack of maintenance since then, and though it has been made secure, it is considered to be at risk of further deterioration. The council has inspected the interior and found no evidence of unauthorised works. The latest information is that it could be reopened as a restaurant.