Distance: 1.7 miles

Difficulty of the terrain: easy

Get the route: via Ordnance Survey Maps or download the GPX. file from Dropbox

Short walk from Moseley centre via the River Rea Path to Cannon Hill Park location of the Golden Lion a wooden framed 16th Century pub, currently disused and derelict, but deeply historic.

The Story

The Walk

Getting Back

Cannon Hill’s Tumbled Down Boozer

Partway up the ridge that rises towards the inner-Birmingham suburb of Moseley, from the ornamental swan boating lake in the middle of Cannon Hill Park, stands a small structure currently absolutely swaddled in scaffolding.

This building – which as you approach reveals itself as a half timbered building of Tudor looking bearing – is the Golden Lion. 

As the name suggests the Golden Lion was for much of its existence a pub. By 1600 the Golden Lion was an established inn, as well as having a craft use, as a tannery. Doubtless is smelt absolutely foul. The building remained in use as a Deritend pub throughout the 18th and 19th Centuries until 1911.

In 1911 in true Birmingham fashion it was proposed to demolish the venerable building to widen Deritend High Street. Now the Old Crown Inn dating supposedly back to the 1360s (the current structure was once a medieval religious guildhall) is pretty much the only pre-Victorian building in that part of the city.

Mindful of the Golden Lion’s potential historical significance, and also the tumbledown, timbered pub’s amenity value, the Birmingham Archaeological Society raised the money to transport the pub further up the River Rea two miles south from the city centre to where it currently stands in Cannon Hill Park. 

Here the Golden Lion, after being erected once more and refurbished, became a sports pavilion. Very soon after its relocation to Cannon Hill Park the building was damaged and nearly destroyed in a 1912 arson attack by members of the Suffragette Movement. The activists in the Women’s Social and Political Union (to give the Suffrages their official title) have been largely sanitised, however; while generally avoiding endangering life, their campaign of direct action against infrastructure and property was one of the most widespread and sustained campaigns of domestic terrorism in British history.

After the relative excitement of the suffragette attack the Golden Lion remained in Cannon Hill Park as a sports pavilion and refreshment room until the 1980s. The structure was listed in 1952. By the 1990s however, the building had not been properly maintained for years and had seriously decayed. This led to the structure being shut entirely in 1996, with the scaffolding and fencing around the site being erected in the years since.

It is now possible that after at least 400 years of use, one major site move and the 1912 arson attack, that the Golden Lion is so badly decayed that it cannot be saved. However, for years there has been a stalwart group of campaigners trying to find a future for one of Birmingham’s oldest and most historic buildings, seen by hundreds of thousands of city residents and visitors each year in Cannon Hill Park. A friend’s organisation for the Golden Lion (at the time of writing in December 2023) appeared to be dormant. However, in November 2023 Historic England allocated a £32,000 grant to a survey of the building to determine its condition, what works were needed and begin planning a potential future for the building.

The Walk

Get the route via: Ordnance Survey Maps or download the GPX. file from Dropbox

This walk was created using Ordnance Survey Explorer. To subscribe and also get Ordnance Survey Maps on your phone, click the banner above.

This walk to the Golden Lion in Cannon Hill Park, one of Birmingham’s oldest and most imperilled buildings, begins from the bus stops near the crossroads in central Moseley. This is also near the much delayed Moseley Village Railway Station which is supposed to open in 2024 (time will tell).

Walk towards the crossroads at the centre of Moseley where the Alcester Road crosses the top of Salisbury road. Moseley has long been one of Birmingham’s most affluent suburbs, with a famously bohemian vibe stretching back at least as far as the 1960s and 1970s.

Cross the top of Salisbury Road and walk up Alcester Road passing Moseley’s branch of Damascena, the Dark Horse bar and the suburb’s post office.

Keep on walking out of Moseley up Alcester Road passing The Village pub and Moseley Hall Hospital which has a distinctive dovecote in the grounds.

Presently you reach Reddings Road on your right next to the Hope Chapel evangelical church. Turn right onto Reddings Road.

Keep walking along Reddings road for quite some distance. Eventually you reach a junction. Here Redding Road meets Moor Green Lane.

Cross the road here to theleft, then turn right, before heading left down Holders Lane which leads past a playing field behind the former Britannic Insurance Building which has now been turned into flats. Off on your right there stands the building which houses the Birmingham office of the Church of Scientology, one of the organisation’s major bases in the UK.

Just past the Scientology building on your right you reach the top of Holders Lane. Turn right here and walk along the road for some distance.

Approaching a stand of trees, Holders Lane forks. Keep on straight ahead walking along a narrow access road with a few houses fronting on it, rather than turning left onto an estate of 1970s vintage houses.

Keep on along the track approaching a block of flats either newly built in an old style or undergoing refurbishment. Off to your right there are spectacular views across the Holders Lane allotments across the Edgbaston and Birmingham city centre, beyond that.

Past the flats you approach a car park above the Holders Lane playing fields. Here keep walking straight approaching a set of concrete bollards.

Walk past the bollards straight ahead now heading downhill towards the River Rea which wounds through a long linear park beneath you.

Approaching the bottom you follow the path past some trees to a junction next to a long grassy strip level with the River Rea path. Here turn right and cross the grass to reach the main River Rea path.

Upon reaching the River Rea path turn right. Keep on straight along the path following the river as you approach the edge of Cannon Hill Park.

Presently the path curves around sharply to the right, waymarked by a rather retro signpost passing a hard standing area sometimes used for funfairs and a playground. This is the edge of Cannon Hill Park.

Just beyond the playground and hard standing area you come to the start of the first ornamental lake in the middle of Cannon Hill Park. Here turn right. Around this point you get your first view of the Golden Lion, halfway up a slope above the ornamental lake, wreathed in scaffolding.

Upon reaching the path around the grassy slope which rises up towards the upper part of the park from the ornamental lake turn right. Follow the path around approaching the Golden Lion.

On reaching the Golden Lion this is where the walk finishes.

Getting Back

From Cannon Hill Park it is pretty easy to get to the Pershore and Bristol Roads which have buses running to and from the city centre to the far south of the city. Just head to the Midlands Art Centre and make your way there from the MAC. The 61 and 63 go past Selly Oak Railway Station on the Cross City Line. Alternatively to get back to Moseley keep on walking past the Golden Lion to the far side of Cannon Hill Park. Upon reaching Edgbaston Road turn right and then head back to the centre of Moseley via either Salisbury Road or Park Hill.