Lost pub · Durdar Road

The Black Lion

1929 to 2024

Built: Opened 6 May 1929, extended 1969
Gone: Closed as a pub 14 July 2024
There now: Dora Turkish Cuisine
Address: 517 Durdar Road

This one matters more than most, because the look of every model pub the scheme built afterwards starts here. Durdar was the first place Redfern was allowed to work in his favourite Arts and Crafts manner: the English country-house ideal, asymmetrical, deep hipped roof, dormers, high chimneys. He had built houses in that style for Cambridge dons before he came north. The Apple Tree, the Spinners, the Magpie and the Redfern itself all descend from what he did on Durdar Road.

It opened on 6 May 1929, the first of the three he and J & R Bell put up that year, four months ahead of the Coach & Horses and the Horse and Farrier. It replaced an older Black Lion almost opposite, taken by the scheme in March 1918. The date of that building is not established beyond being pre-1865; it stands today as a private house with no public access, so the two Black Lions of Durdar face each other across the road, one a home and one a restaurant, and neither a pub.

Redfern's was extended in 1969. The last decade was restless. It went up for sale in August 2016 at £225,000, shut for refurbishment from February to October 2017, was taken on by Hawksdale Inns, and was fully refurbished again in 2022 under new owners. It traded well in between: five minutes from junction 42, along the road from the racecourse and heaving on race days, with a reputation for using local butchers and suppliers and an unusually good vegan menu for a country pub.

Then it closed on 14 July 2024, and CAMRA marked it closed long term five days later, seeking new tenants. None came. It is Dora Turkish Cuisine now. There is a tidy circularity to the address. Durdar is where the racecourse moved in 1904 when it left the Swifts by the Eden, and the Turf in town was that old course's grandstand. The pub that made Redfern's name stood on the road to the course that replaced the one the Turf was built for.

Not to be confused with the Black Lion at Hethersgill, out east, which is a different pub, also on the scheme list, and still open. One absence says more than any of this. Redfern's other suburban pubs are protected: the Spinners at Cummersdale is listed, so is the Horse and Farrier, so is the Redfern Inn. No listing has been found for the Black Lion. The building where the style began, the one every other Redfern pub in this city descends from, appears to be the only one of them with no statutory protection at all, and it is the one that has stopped being a pub.

Durdar itself is a crossroads about three miles south of the Cross, in the parish of St Cuthbert Without, and the parish record identifies the place by its pub: a small suburban area based around a crossroads, with a pub, the Black Lion, and a petrol station. That is the whole description. The village was named by the thing that has now gone.

Sources

Also lost on Durdar Road

The White Ox

All the lost pubs