Take a look inside pub on outskirts of Bridgnorth which is warm and welcoming with great views

It sits in a former Georgian farmhouse which became a pub in the early 1850’s after Thomas Bowker took advantage of the Duke of Wellington's Beer House Act 1830 and paid two guineas to turn his farmhouse into a pub.

Known as the Red Lion, the pub has been part of the community since and, in 1961, was renamed the Lion O'Morfe in reference to the manor land the pub was built on, with Morfe coming from the Welsh name meaning marsh.

The pub has been in the ownership of the Jervis Family since Brian Jervis bought the pub in 2010, after it had been closed for a few years, and current landlord Sam said a lot of work had gone into restoring and getting the pub ready to receive customers in 2015.

He said: "My dad has owned the Cider House in Bridgnorth for about 40 years and I'd helped out there in the past, doing shifts behind the bar and then, gradually doing more and more.

"Dad had also started doing a mobile bar business and we would go past this pub and he'd talk about how he'd own it one day and he managed to buy it off the lady who owned it and who had wanted to turn it into a house.

"The place needed a fair bit of tarting up and while it wasn't ruined, it just needed a bit of refreshing and redecorating, but we also tried to keep it as close to the original as we could."

The distinctive frontage of the pub, with the red lion easy to see, brings people into the main bar, which has an open fire and cosy wooden bench seating.

To the rear is a snug with a traditional range which is lit during colder months and to the left of the bar is a traditionally decorated lounge leading to a conservatory.

Indoor and outdoor toilet facilities are available and the garden area has seating and a boules piste used by local teams.

The pub has proved to be a popular place for locals, as well as a destination for people wanting a good pint, with visitors coming from Halesowen, Stourbridge and a lot of other parts of the area outside Bridgnorth.

It has also won a number of awards over the years, including CAMRA Marches area, Shropshire county, Telford & East Shropshire overall branch and Bridgnorth sub branch Pub of the Year 2018, as well as Telford & East Shropshire Rural Pub of the Years 2020 & 2022.

As a freehold, Mr Jervis said the Lion O'Morfe was free to sell whatever beer he and the locals wanted.

He said: "We have a lot of freedom and I do find that HPA is probably our most popular beer as we sell quite a lot of that, but we also have Butty Bach, Town Crier, Enville Ale and Three Tuns XXX on hand pulls as well.

"We sell a good range of lagers and ciders, with Stowford Press, Thatchers Haze and Cider House cloudy cider on offer, plus we do a great selection of spirits, including a damson vodka."

Mr Jervis said the pub also had a simple food menu of pub classics, as well as a Sunday roast, and said that the snacks were a good mix of homemade and locally sourced.

He said: "We don't do food on a Monday, but we have plenty of pub snacks and we make the scotch eggs ourselves in the kitchen, while the pork pies are bought from a butcher not too far away from us.

"This pub, to me, is all about the community and it has been part of my life for nine years and, I hope, for many more years to come."