As often happens we sometimes ignore, or not really notice, things that are on our own doorstep and that we've passed by most days for years. One of those things is this wonderful pub sign of the long defunct pub The Golden Lion. Philip Wilkinson, in his blog English Buildings, has several times highlighted three-dimensional signs - especially old pub signs - which was an excellent reminder to take some photos of this one and add it to my former website (and now the blog). And there's something a bit odd about it too.
Looking at old photos of Fore Street, you can plainly see a golden lion statue on top of the portico, but it's a different one. Mention is made in The Book of Seaton by Ted Gosling (on a caption beneath a 1962 photo of Fore Street) that the sign, like the pub, was relegated to history some years ago. The book was published in 2002, therefore presumably this new sign hadn't appeared then. I never saw this one put in place or read about it in the local newspapers but it seemed that one day this statue wasn't there and another day it was!
I haven't been able to discover anything about the pub, apart from two references; one mentioning the name as The Golden Lion and the other to just The Lion, which may have been the predecessor of the former. I'm still doing some research so, as always, I'll add further information to the article as and when I find anything new. The photo below shows the view looking up Fore Street.
I only have these four recent photos, along with the one below that I took at the Christmas Festival in 2011. Apologies for the lack of decent close-ups, but circumstances prevented me at the time, and like the information I will add more when I have them.
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