Westminster Arms, AKA Red Lion and Mossay & Company

After our visit to Westminster Abbey, we took a break at Westminster Arms.  I felt the need to try to British room temperature beer or ale, and a fish and chips.  It is always good when visiting to try something new, even if you do not think you would like it.  This building was another one of those humdingers of a hunt, and I did not find much at that.  The plaque above the signage indicates it was formerly the Red Lion, rebuilt 1913.  (Note, the 3 is not visible from this angle, but is from Google Street view).  I searched under every possible topic on the Internet and in the newspaper archives and turned up zip that led me to anything else connected to the earlier Red Lion.

It was the very picture of an English pub, with wooden booths that made for a cozy spot.  I kept going back and trying different searches with different wording and finally stumbled into a wikipedia entry that cited a London directory showing it was the home of Mossay & Company, est. 1913 at 9 Princes Street, for a business related to electric lorries.  The street was later renamed Storey’s Gate.  From there, I did new searches, but turned up nothing in the papers on Mossay or any of his partners, but the 2019 pubwiki.co.uk (also linked from the Mossay wiki article) indicated the earliest reference to the Red Lion pub was 1822, and that it was at this location at one point.  None of that shows up in the newspaper archives, although I could turn up a few items for 9 Princes Street, nothing in connection with Red Lion, Westminster Arms, or Mossay and his electric lorries.  This will have to be one of those mostly unsolved mysteries for now.  And now, it’s time for that beer or ale!