Red Lion Inn (Southampton)

The Red Lion occupies No 55 High Street, on the east side of the street that Southampton's medieval walls enclosed. Historic England listed it Grade II* on 14 July 1953 as “Red Lion Inn including Medieval Vault”, dated the fabric “Late C15 and early C16” and noted that the black-and-white front is “three storeys C20 sham timber-framing”. The same entry carries the claim the pub is known for, and carries it as hearsay: below the hall lies a medieval vault “reputed to be the ‘Court room’” where the men of the Southampton Plot were tried in 1415. Richard of Conisburgh, Earl of Cambridge, Henry Scrope, Lord Scrope of Masham, and Sir Thomas Grey of Heton were real and their trial is documented, but the account of 2 August 1415 puts it in the hall of Southampton Castle, before the king, some seventy-five years before this building was raised. The ghost attached to the story is a procession said to leave the inn for the Bargate, printed by the Daily Echo on 31 October 2002 alongside a ghost walk that took the same route.

The pub stands at No 55 High Street, on the east side of the street that the medieval walls of Southampton once enclosed. The statutory list entry, made on 14 July 1953 and given a minor amendment on 5 March 2021 “to reformat the text to current standards”, is titled “Red Lion Inn including Medieval Vault” and dates the fabric “Late C15 and early C16”. It is blunt about the front that every photograph shows: “Facade is three storeys C20 sham timber-framing but behind is a well preserved late medieval timber-framed hall-house.” Behind that front the surveyor recorded “the very high hall of three bays long which rises the whole height of the building to the tiebeam roof with windbraces”, a screened passageway with a balustraded gallery above it, and two stone fireplaces “probably early C16” with “moulded four-centred arch and rounded tracery patterns in square panels in the front of the overmantel”. Historic England serves the entry under list number 1092055; the text quoted here was read in the verbatim republication at British Listed Buildings. The same entry carries the claim that made the house famous, and carries it as hearsay, with the transcription damage of the original: “Below the hall is a medieval vault, probably remaining from an earlier house on the site, reputed to be the ‘Court room’ where the intending assassins of Henry V, Lord Scrops of Masham, Sir Thomas Grey and the flatly of Cambridge were tried when Henry V was in Southampton in 1415, preparing for Horfleur and Agincourt.” “Lord Scrops of Masham” is Henry Scrope, third Baron Scrope of Masham, “the flatly of Cambridge” is Richard of Conisburgh, Earl of Cambridge, and “Horfleur” is Harfleur. Those three men, with Sir Thomas Grey of Heton, are among the best-documented defendants of fifteenth-century England. Historic Southampton, a local history site run by Steve Willey, reproduces the passage in which Ian Mortimer describes 2 August 1415 in his book 1415: Henry V's Year of Glory: “Twelve Hampshire men, selected from an empanelled total of thirty-six, were appointed to the jury. In the castle of Southampton, in the king's presence, they listened to the cases of each man. The constable of the castle, John Popham, led the accused from the dungeon and into the hall where the jury was sitting.” The same page records that Grey was beheaded outside the Bargate that afternoon and that Cambridge and Scrope followed three days later, and it notes that when Shakespeare dramatised the episode around 1599 he set the sentencing in a Southampton “council-chamber”, with no inn in sight. The licensed history of the house begins much later. Historic Southampton, following Tony Gallaher's Southampton's Inns and Taverns, gives 1552 as the year of its first licence to sell alcohol, and Sotonopedia gives the same date. Gallaher also supplies a name change that runs the other way: George Burcy, landlord of this house, became landlord of a pub further up the High Street in 1740 and appears to have taken the sign with him, which leaves the Red Lion “quite possibly once called the Nag's Head prior to 1740”. Southampton City Council's 1870 map of the town shows the Red Lion and the newer Nag's Head standing separately on the High Street, each with its own tap room. The Second World War reshaped the building the visitor sees. Southampton's High Street burned in the raids of November 1940 — an eyewitness quoted by Historic Southampton called it “a huge wall of fire and flames” — and Holyrood Church, eighty yards away, lost its roof and is now a merchant navy memorial. The Red Lion was damaged and survived. Sotonopedia dates its restoration to 1952; CAMRA's surveyors date the work to 1950-2 and credit it with reopening the rear gallery, which “had been enclosed at some stage”. The mock-Tudor upper storeys are older than that repair and younger than the hall: CAMRA calls them “redolent of ‘Brewers’ Tudor’ of the 1920s”, and the ground floor was re-fronted after the bombing. One detail of the legend has moved around the building. In 1953 the state placed the reputed court room in the vault below the hall. CAMRA's National Inventory description, surveyed on 28 July 2015, applies the same sentence to the ground floor instead: “The bar is called the Henry IV Court Room as it is reputed to be the ‘Court room’ where the intending assassins of Henry V… were tried.” Sotonopedia places it higher still, in “the upper room, now called Henry V's Court House”. By February 2026 the sale particulars quoted in the Daily Echo were selling “the ‘fine timbered apartment’ known as Henry V's Court Room”, and adding that “a rubbing from stone describing the execution can be seen in the Court Room”.

The Red Lion trades at 55 High Street, Southampton SO14 2NS, telephone (023) 8033 3595. CAMRA's WhatPub record for the house, pub ID HAS/00548, last updated on 28 April 2026, gives opening hours of 11:00 to 23:00 from Monday to Saturday and noon to 22:30 on Sunday, with food served noon to 14:30 and 17:30 to 21:00 on weekdays and Saturday, and noon to 17:00 on Sunday. Entry is free, as at any pub. The room worth the journey is the main bar, which is the medieval hall itself. CAMRA's National Inventory grades the interior “Three star - A pub interior of outstanding national historic importance”, its highest band, and describes a hall that “soars through to its full height and displays its massive timber framing”, two balustraded galleries reached by a staircase, and an early sixteenth-century stone fireplace at the rear. A second fireplace stands in the rear lounge, now used as a dining room. The medieval vault that the 1953 list entry calls the reputed court room lies below the hall and forms part of the cellarage; CAMRA's surveyors noted only “the figure ‘5’ on the door to the cellar”. The half-timbered walls of the rear room “come from a post-war ‘Mock Tudor’ refurbishment”. Ownership is in motion: the freehold was advertised in February 2026 at just under £700,000 as an investment, with the pub staying on as tenant under a twenty-five-year full repairing and insuring lease that began in December 2022 at £50,000 a year. The company that had run the house from 55 High Street, Red Lion Pub Southampton Limited, number 05040771, incorporated on 11 February 2004 and registered under SIC code 56302 for public houses and bars, was dissolved on 5 March 2024. The Bargate, where Grey, Cambridge and Scrope were beheaded, stands up the same High Street and is free to see from the street. The shell of Holyrood Church, eighty yards from the pub and gutted in the raids of November 1940, is listed by Historic England as “Former Holy Rood Church, Now a Merchant Navy Memorial”.