The Lansdown, a large Regency building, is still trading but has undergone a transformation in recent years. In April 1997 a local resident told the ‘Gloucestershire Echo’ newspaper: “The change of use of the former Lansdown Hotel from a quiet residential hotel into a themed public house catering for young people has dramatically harmed the amenity value of the area”.
The Darby family were the owners, and indeed occupiers, of the Lansdown Hotel from mid-Victorian to early Edwardian times. John Thomas Darby is listed as the owner in 1891, and twelve years later in 1903 ownership was held by Francis Jane & Edith Mary Darby. The Lansdown Hotel was a free house and licensed as an alehouse with a considerable annual rateable value of £144.10s.0d. sustained at that level throughout those years.
The name of the Lansdown Hotel has changed several times in the recent past, trading briefly at various times as the Dog and Doughnut, the Rat and Carrot, and the Rattle and Hum. The premises is now (thankfully) called the Lansdown Bar and has 11 plasma screen televisions which regularly show sports events.
The Lansdown in owned by the pub operator and brewer Greene King.
Landlords / Proprietors at the Lansdown Hotel include:
1856,1859 Thomas Darby
1870,1885 Mary Darby
1891 John Thomas Darby
1902 Misses Darby
1903 Francis Jane and Edith Mary Darby
1906 Misses Darby
1919 Harold Gilliard
