The Grosvenor Hotel

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The Grosvenor Hotel, Bridge Street

This building was erected as a house in the late 18th century, when it was known as Bridge House. It later became an inn, exploiting its prominent position at the foot of Bridge Street. Traffic coming off Cardigan Bridge, which is believed to date back to the 13th-century, would encounter the inn before the steep climb into the town centre. Today the building is a pub and restaurant with no guest bedrooms, but retains the Grosvenor Hotel name.

The semi-circular window above the front door retains its original sashes. A curious feature of the frontage is that the first-floor windows are not aligned above features on the ground floor, such as the doorway.

In the early decades of the 19th century David Davies and his brother Thomas were based at Bridge House, from where they ran industrial and marine businesses. David Davies was a Sheriff of Cardiganshire in the 1835, when he advertised for a tenant for the “convenient, commodious and extensive warehouses, counting-houses, and malt house, kiln etc” in Bridge Street, along with the “quay underneath”. He wrote that goods could be landed at the quay without the costs of land carriage, and this business had been conducted there for 50 years.

In August 1485 Henry Tudor’s fledgling army crossed the river Teifi here, on its way to the Battle of Bosworth. Victory there resulted in him being crowned King Henry VII. Henry’s men met no significant resistance from Cardigan Castle. King Richard III’s administration had put the castle on a skeleton staff, not expecting any challengers to his authority to pass this way. Instead, loyalists had strengthened defences along the obvious east-west route across South Wales as news spread of Henry’s landing in Pembrokeshire.

Postcode: SA43 1HY View Location Map

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