Former Green Dragon Hotel, Brecon

PWMP logobutton_lang_welshFormer Green Dragon Hotel, Brecon

This building (home to Lexy’s barber shop) was once the Green Dragon Temperance Hotel, a venue for alcohol-free socialising at a time  of public concern about drunkenness. Chapels often chose the Green Dragon for events. Brecon Welsh Society held eisteddfodau here on St David’s Day.

The building replaced an earlier inn called the Green Dragon which had been adapted to form the offices of the Brecon County Times. The printing press was in a draughty back room. Two shops at the front sold music and confectionery.

brecon_ivor_daviesBy 1891 Magdalen Moses was running a coffee tavern here. As a teenager she had been a general servant for Brecon County Gaol’s governor.

She married David John Davies of Llywel in 1894. Their son Ivor G Davies (pictured right) attended the Mount Street and County schools and became a Barclay’s Bank clerk in Hay-on-Wye. During the First World War he joined the Duke of Edinburgh’s Wiltshire Regiment and was promoted to Second Lieutenant. He was killed by a machine-gun bullet as he and his comrades pursued the retreating German army in France on 8 August 1918. He was 24 years old.

During the war, Mrs Davies catered for events to entertain wounded soldiers. In 1917 her bread baker, Albert John Coates, 26, was excused from military service, his work being regarded as “of national importance”.

Brecon Post Office staff held their annual supper and social event at the Green Dragon in January 1918 – the first time “women rural postmen” were included. Some of Brecon’s male postal workers had gone to war.

Mrs Davies was one of several Brecon traders fined in March 1919 for selling fish or meat above the legal maximum price. Although the war had ended months earlier, price controls remained in force, having been imposed by the government alongside food rationing. Mrs Davies sold an undercover inspector a tin of salmon for 3s. The legal maximum was 2s 3d. She had bought a stock of salmon when it was “free” (of price controls).

The first floor here was home to the Brecon RAFA branch from 1952 to 1971, when it moved to the former Angel Hotel.

With thanks to Steve Morris of Breconshire Local & Family History Society

Postcode: LD3 7LA    View Location Map

To continue the Brecon in WW1 tour, walk along Lion Street almost to its far end. The next QR codes are outside the Plough Chapel, on the left
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