The Old Red Lion is a pub and fringe theatre, at Angel, in the London Borough of Islington.
The theatre was founded in 1948 as the Old Red Lion Theatre Club. The pub was Grade II listed in 1994 by Historic England.
History
Construction
The pub in itself is one of the oldest in London, having first been built in 1415 in what was then the rural village of Islington in open countryside and fields. A house called Goose Farm and some nearby cattle pens (for herds being driven to Smithfield Market) were the only structures to adjoin it, and St John Street (then called Chester Road) was a country lane.
18th century
In the late 18th century Chester Road became notorious for highwaymen, with patrols being provided to protect those travelling along it at night. At this time descriptions state that the Old Red Lion was a small brick house with three trees in its forecourt, visited by William Hogarth (who portrayed it in the middle distance of his painting "Evening", with the foreground being Sadler's Wells), Samuel Johnson and Thomas Paine (who wrote The Rights of Man in the shade of the trees in its forecourt).
The Red Lion was an Elizabethan playhouse located in Whitechapel (part of the modern Borough of Tower Hamlets), just outside the City of London. Built in 1567, by John Brayne, formerly a grocer, this theatre was a short-lived attempt to provide a purpose-built playhouse, the first known in London, for the many Tudor touring theatrical companies.
The Red Lion had been a farm, but a single gallery multi-sided theatre (constructed by John Williams), with a fixed stage 40 feet (12.2 m) by 30 feet (9.1 m), standing 5 feet (1.5 m) above the audience, was built by John Reynolds, in the garden of the farmhouse. The stage was equipped with trapdoors, and an attached 30 feet (9.1 m) turret, or fly tower – for aerial stunts and to advertise its presence. The construction cost £20, and while it appears to have been a commercial success, the Red Lion offered little that the prior tradition of playing in inns had not offered, and it was too far from its audiences to be attractive (at the time, the area was open farmland) for visiting in the winter.
The Ashbel Smith Building, also known as Old Red, is a Romanesque Revival building located in Galveston, Texas. It was built in 1891 with red brick and sandstone. Nicholas J. Clayton was the architect. It was the first University of Texas Medical Branch building.
In 1949, the building named for Ashbel Smith, a Republic of Texas diplomat and one of the founders of the University of Texas system. The building was registered as a Texas Historical Landmark in 1969 and renovated in 1985.
In 2008, Old Red was flooded with six feet of water by Hurricane Ike.
References
Podcasts:
Old Red
by: Marty RobbinsOld Red was one of the orniest yet
I'd seen at the big rodeo
He'd bite you and kick you and stomp out your life,
Old Red had never been rode
Meaner than sin,wild as the wind
That blew on the Montana plains
Old Red was one of the last of it's kind
And wasn't about to be tamed
From Idaho,a young cowboy came
To ride at the big rodeo
The young cowboy's name was Billy McLean.
And Billy had never been thrown
The meanest desire filled young Billy's heart
To ride this old outlaw called Red
He drew him one day and I heard Billy say
"I'll ride him or drop over dead"
Old Red was waiting down there in the chute
He was kicking and stomping about
Billy climbed into the saddle with ease
He yelled turn him loose let us out
Old Red came out with his head on the ground
His back hooves were touching his nose
Trying to get rid of the man on his back
But the man went wherever he goes
Billy was raking Old Red with his spurs
From the tail to the tip of his chin
He was doing right well,but Billy could tell
This outlaw would never give in
Old Red headed straight for the fence
Suddenly stopping and then
He reared on his hind legs and fell on his back
Taking poor Billy with him
There was a hush from the crowd and they knew
That this would be Billies last ride
The saddle horn crushed Billies chest when he fell
And under Old Red Billy died
Old Red lay still,no more did he move
The cowboys that seen it could tell
In trying to throw Billy off his back
Old Red broke his neck when he fell
Out in the west,there's a place where they rest
This cowboy that's never been thrown
Just one foot away resting there neath the clay