Angel Hotel, St Mary Street, Cardigan
This hotel was described as an “old-established inn” in 1864 when the licensee was Alice Perrott, who married surgeon John Davies of Finch’s Square in 1873. She died in 1902, aged 69. Her daughter became the licensee in 1909.
Some historians have suggested the Knights Hospitaller of St John had a medieval hospice in this vicinity. In the 12th century, Earl Roger de Clare granted three burgages in the town to the Hospitallers. These could have been houses, tenements or burgage plots. As Cardigan was a borough, the knights would have had a hospes (literally ‘guest’) living in the town who was exempt from paying dues. Hospes may have been misinterpreted centuries later as ‘hospice’.
Various properties were auctioned at the Angel Inn in June 1806. Other items auctioned here included the sloop Commerce in December 1840, when the hotel was kept by master mariner Captain David James. There was also an excise office in the building. He built new stables and coach houses to form a “fine square” enclosed by secure railings and walls. Vehicles available for hire included chaises, phaetons, gigs, a hearse and mourning coaches, along with “steady Horses and careful Drivers”.
The hotel’s setting was transformed when buildings on the opposite side of St Mary Street were demolished, to be replaced by Morgan Street in 1902. The street was built opposite the hotel by solicitor and former town mayor Charles Morgan-Richardson of Noyadd Wilym, who’d bought the Gwbert Estate in 1889. He had inherited all the property of his business partner Thomas Morgan on condition that he inserted ‘Morgan’ into his surname! Morgan Street was so-named by Charles before the council adopted it as a public highway in June 1903.
In 1906 horse breeders were invited to view a Hackney stallion named Stortford Denmark at the Angel Hotel.
The hotel was a meeting place for many organisations, including cycling and boating clubs, the Cwmmawr band, the Vale of Tivy Co-operative Agricultural Society, the local Oddfellows branch (a mutual aid society) and the Tivyside Fanciers’ Association (fanciers were people who kept racing pigeons).
With thanks to Emerita Professor Helen Nicholson, of Cardiff University, for the medieval information
Postcode: SA43 1ET View Location Map