The former Crown Hotel was a busy and quite salubrious establishment in the late nineteenth century with coach housing, stables and gardens to the side and rear (now lorry access from Crane Street to the rear of the shops and the coach houses and stables now a mews of shops).
The Crown Hotel closed in the early twentieth century and the building then housed Pontypool’s popular Woolworth’s store for the rest of the century.
In 2009, Iceland purchased the shop after Woolworth’s went into liquidation following the 2008 financial crisis.
(The former Crown Hotel, and right, the Iceland store which has replaced it. Pictures: Torfaen Museum.)
If you look at the photograph of the Crown Hotel on the left you will see the large oriel window that is still above the Iceland store today – and with the same glass and stone-work patterns.
Then look three windows to the left on the newest photograph and you will see where the Crown Hotel’s balcony used to be - above its grand, front entrance and below the large ‘Crown’ architrave on the roof.
Nostalgia is provided by Torfaen Museum.
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