The team behind The Llandoger Trow know a thing or two about owning a creepy building. This legendary pub on King Street, which once served pints to pirates, is said to be haunted. There are supposedly up to 15 ghosts wandering the Grade II Listed Building; the most famous of which is a small boy, with a metal leg support, that wanders the top floor.
While the pub dates back to 1664, its current owners have only been in charge since 2021. (Although they have maintained much of the original design and embraced its history.) The Bloomsbury Leisure Group also own The Lanes and Crofters Rights in Bristol, but they’ll soon be adding one more venue to their repertoire.
Over on Twitter, The Llandoger Trow has been hinting at the launch of a new “sister site.” The first came on April 29, promising “something that will be quite different.” Although the attached image of a derelict shelf revealed little information. The pub’s second Tweet (May 8) revealed a lot more, however.
“Seems like people are pretty interested in our new sister venue location….. so many people in our DMs!” it said. “We think it’s only fair to send another teaser.”
From the design of the stained-glass windows, we can confidently guess the new venue will quite clearly be the inside of a church, albeit one in quite bad disrepair. There’s half-dismantled scaffolding, broken floorboards and dust everywhere. But despite the ruinous appearance, it shows plenty of promise to become an amazing venue.
We can’t say for certain these are recent photos – there’s every chance The Llandoger Trow team have long been hard at work to turn this abandoned church into something hospitable. They’ve been tight-lipped on any other details so what it will host and when we can expect it is anyone’s guess. That’s before we even get to the where!
One guess is “the church at the bottom of St Michael’s Hill”, but The Mount Without has been running breathtaking shows since 2021. Another guess on Twitter is the “old church off Queen Square”, likely meaning the long-abandoned Seamen’s Church. If you ask us, this photo of the abandoned church here by Terence Kusnierek, uploaded to Google Maps in February, looks A LOT like the photo shared by The Llandoger Trow yesterday.
For now, we’ll just have to wait for confirmation to learn more. You can keep up-to-date with announcements here.