Flare - Lion Garage, Castle Street, Builth Wells, Powys LD2 3BN 1997 2
Photographed here in its last days as a Flare site before changing brand to Butler, the Lion Garage is a distinctive design, with the red and white chequerboard frontage really eye catching. Streetview shows that it was an ex Butler site in 2009. One imagines it only sold fuel for a short while longer, maybe into the new century for a few years before petrol sales ended. The earliest Streetview shows it had become a lawn mower specialist and also that the neat red and white squares were badly eroded showing a lot of blue paint under the red which must have been added later. The fact it was previously in blue and white squares leads me to think that maybe it had been a National site in the 1980s, but that's just a guess.
Certainly there has been a garage here for a long time as an image search shows up what I think is a 1930s image which shows the front section of this garage selling back then Esso Ethyl and BP petrol.
commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Broad_street,_Builth_Well...(1293469).jpg
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It looks like the garage took its name from the adjacent Lion Hotel and was originally a petrol station for its customers.
Below I've added a photo from 2021 showing the forecourt bare and the pumps gone. Apparently the pumps lasted until about 2019.
Flare - Lion Garage, Castle Street, Builth Wells, Powys LD2 3BN 1997 2
Photographed here in its last days as a Flare site before changing brand to Butler, the Lion Garage is a distinctive design, with the red and white chequerboard frontage really eye catching. Streetview shows that it was an ex Butler site in 2009. One imagines it only sold fuel for a short while longer, maybe into the new century for a few years before petrol sales ended. The earliest Streetview shows it had become a lawn mower specialist and also that the neat red and white squares were badly eroded showing a lot of blue paint under the red which must have been added later. The fact it was previously in blue and white squares leads me to think that maybe it had been a National site in the 1980s, but that's just a guess.
Certainly there has been a garage here for a long time as an image search shows up what I think is a 1930s image which shows the front section of this garage selling back then Esso Ethyl and BP petrol.
commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Broad_street,_Builth_Well...(1293469).jpg
It looks like the garage took its name from the adjacent Lion Hotel and was originally a petrol station for its customers.
Below I've added a photo from 2021 showing the forecourt bare and the pumps gone. Apparently the pumps lasted until about 2019.