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Colchester was already a major settlement when the Romans captured it, and it became the first Roman town in Britain. The Red Lion stands on a Roman site: fragments of mosaic were uncovered during the excavations of 1857 and 1882, so it is likely that a building has been standing here for nearly two thousand years.
The existing house, however, was built as a home for a wealthy burgess in the fifteenth century. There is fifteenth-century masonry in the cellar, and the wattle-and-daub infill between the timbers has been dated to around 1470. The frontage, with its projecting upper floors, is richly timbered with wooden panels carved in the Perpendicular style, quite as elaborate as any church traceries.
The earliest mention of the Red Lion is in 1529, although at that time it was the White Lion, and it was probably converted from a private house to a tavern selling wine in about 1500. By 1625 the lion had changed colour, probably to mark the accession of James I in 1603, a red lion being one of the supporters of the arms of Scotland. In the Civil War, East Anglia was a Parliament stronghold - Cromwell himself was an East Anglian - but in the short second Civil War of 1648 the town fell into the hands of Royalists led by Sir George Lisle and Sir Charles Lucas. After a siege of several weeks, Colchester fell to General Fairfax. The beaten defenders were rounded up and held in the Red Lion yard while their leaders were hastily tried and then shot, Lisle's last words being: "Your shot, your shame; our fall, our fame."
During the siege the town had been in desperate straits, with starving citizens eating dogs, cats, rats and anything else they could find. It rapidly recovered, however, and in 1656 and 1668 we hear of the Red Lion issuing its own trade tokens when coinage was scarce - the mark of a prosperous concern. Some rebuilding was carried out at the dawn of the coaching era (a lead gutter in the yard bears the date 1716) and in 1756 the inn was the terminus for an express service to London, although its rival the Cups, was the more prominent of the two in coaching terms.
The Red Lion became a Trust House in 1913 and subsequent renovations uncovered several finely carved interior beams which had probably been plastered over for two hundred years. The old inn yard is now roofed over.
From The David and Charles Book of Historic English Inns
Ted Bruning and Keith Paulin, 1982
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