One of the things I wanted to do in Brecon was to look for the hotel which the Vicks managed in the second part of the 1840s and 1850. A newspaper advertisement for the sale of hotel contents at the time of bankruptcy provided a hotel name. A copy of a 1840 advertisement online at the National Library of Wales provided a beautiful engraving of the face of the hotel. I knew what to look for. Ann Vick’s burial record provided an address. While loitering on a street corner prior to returning to our B&B after tea and a walk one of us looked across the street and upwards to find the street name of the required street.
Advertisement of auction of contents of hotel to be held on 15 December 1850
1840 engraved advertisement for the hotel offering, among other things, a 23 hour coach trip to London. Found on the National Library of Wales site
The next morning armed with a copy of the advertisement so we could check building configurations with number and size of windows, chimneys etc, rather important in a place like Brecon, we back headed across the bridge and went pub hunting. The street the pub was in was minuscule and while we found no pub we certainly found the original building, now very run down and with an open window through which birds flew, although Google maps show that not so long ago businesses had inhabited the ground floor.
Street name
The remains of the hotel. The building to the left of the pink section is a replacement for a section of hotel demolished sometime previously.
Notice painted onto wall just under the archway and leading to the back
Passage to the rear of the property
The back of the property looking towards the street
The rear of the property
Rather nice stone building whose windows on the other side were boarded up too