Home > Wiltshire > West Dean > Red Lion Red Lion
Date of photo: 1984	Picture source: Tracey Burnett Ham
The Red Lion was situated on Moodys Hill. This grade-II listed pub closed in 1995 and has now been converted to a private dwelling.
This was the pub back in 1974 or '75,(cant remember exactly) that got me into trouble with my boss. I got a summer job at 20 years of age working on a farm owned by the Redshaw family of that area. Up on Dean Hill, if I remember correctly. Working around the farm and with the harvest, will never forget those two pronged forks, to load the trailers with, nightmare. My dad put his caravan under the trees at the entrance of the farm for me to stay in. The Red Lion was a great pub during that summer, cold beer sitting outside next to the river. The bar was in the right hand side room as you walked down the small hallway and in the room on the left was a table football game. I seem to remember something about one half of the pub was in Hampshire and the other in Wiltshire, dunno for sure if true. So there i was mid 1970s whizzing around that area in my little white mini, normally with my beautiful girlfriend (who stupidly i lost). I nearly always had a hangover and overslept which would annoy my boss, John (somebody), the farm foreman. He would always be banging on the caravan at 8 am to wake me up. So I am only blaming the Red Lion for being such 'a great pub' and nice people who drank there too. So as I sit here in Wales in the early hours of Christmas Eve 2013, remembering The Red Lion at West Dean (and my beautiful ex girlfriend / wife, Rosemary), i am saying thank you RedLion for those wonderful memories 38 years ago in the 1970s. Thank you for getting me in trouble with John my boss.
Steve Physick (April 2014)
My parents, Gerald & Jeanne Rowett Johns kept the Red Lion between 1959 and 1976. It was frequently in the news, especially whenever there was a General Election because the Hampshire/Wiltshire county boundary ran right through the centre of the building which meant that they were in two parliamentary constituencies and therefore had a choice of which candidate they voted for. Invariably, egged on by the local media, they would each vote in different constituencies. Straddling the county boundary also mean they got the dustmen twice a week! Not long after they left, the building was allowed a change of use and, sadly, became a private house.
Jerry Johns (February 2021)
This pub was definitely still functional in the 1990s. I never visited it but I knew of it. its "two counties' status, something shared with the Lamb in Nomansland (still open AFAIK), and remember seeing it - open - several times in that decade. I am not sure exactly when it closed, although I know it's been closed for the past 10 or 15 years.
Nick Whitelegg (April 2021)
As the pub straddled two counties there was an anomily in opening and closing times. In Hampshire pubs had to close at 22.30 but in the summer Wiltshire allowed an extension to 23.00. so all those in the Hampshire bar left for the Wiltshire one at 22.30. As a youngster the Red Lion was the nearest pub that stayed open to 23.00.that I could get to by public transport. Spent many a happy time there in the sixties, and caught the last train to Romsey from the adjacent station.
Steve Jarvis (July 2022)
Listed building details:
Inn. Late C17 with front block of late C18-early C19. Brick, rear block tiled, front block slated. Earlier build 2 storeys and attic, 3 bays with central stair hall and narrow passage lean-to at rear under extension of roof. Front build 2 storeys, 4 window bays with entrance in second bay, a high 6-panelled door the upper panels glazed, and porch on columns. Sixteen-paned sashes with gauged brick lintels to ground floor, 12-paned over door. Roof hipped. Two dormers to rear block. The building lies partly in Hampshire within the parish of West Tytherley (q.v.), in district of Test Valley.
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Other Photos
Picture source: Patricia Steed