THE Old Bath Beer House was located on George Street in Pontypool, just past The Cross (the meeting of George St, Commercial St and Upper and Lower Crane Streets).
It was possibly the earliest known public house in Pontypool and indeed, at the end of the eighteenth century, was called the ‘Pontypool Inn’.
It would appear to have been a long established hostelry by the time the then-owner, Thomas Davies, left the Inn in his will of 1839 to his daughter Martha Whitney and her children in perpetuity.
(The Old Bath Beer House on George Street in Pontypool. Picture: Torfaen Museum)
However, within 50 years the Inn was acquired by Donald Rudd, who established his Castle Brewery Ltd there.
In 1902, the Old Bath Beer House was sold to Westlake’s Brewery of Cwmavon.
By 1934 the Inn was ‘referred for compensation’ as an empty building and was finally demolished in 1951 to enable road improvements and widening.
The Old Bath Beer House would have stood about 20 feet in front of the current ‘New Look’ shop in the pedestrianised town centre of Pontypool.
Nostalgia is provided by Torfaen Museum.
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