DANDY highwaymen, drunken soldiers, romps in the bedroom with Tom Jones (the fictional hero not the singer) and sheep driven straight through the building on their way to market... the White Lion Hotel at Upton-upon-Severn has seen them all.

Mind you, it is 500-year-old this year, so there has been a bit of living done behind the giant pilasters and palladian windows that look out across the town’s High Street.

These days the White Lion is a comfortable family-run hotel attracting a nice class of people, both locals and tourists from across the world, who use it as a base to “do” the Cotswolds, Shakespeare country, Malvern and Worcester.

But it hasn’t always been so, especially during the English Civil War when both Royalists and Roundheads passed through, neither of them touring in the accepted sense, although both forces saw quite a bit of the country during the campaign.

In fact, the hotel could reasonably be described as the location where it all started to unravel for Charles II. Spending the night there, the Royalist troops under the command of Prince Rupert “partook in drinking strong waters at the inn”, according to a scribe at the time. In other words, they got hammered. “Whereupon heavy sleep came upon them”– ie they crashed out.

At dawn the next day, the Roundheads tentatively set about crossing a plank, which had been set across the river Severn at Upton after the bridge was destroyed. While the Royalists slept, the Roundheads crept in over the water and pretty soon were in the town and setting up base in the church. By the time Prince Rupert and his troop had rubbed the sleep out of their eyes and tumbled out of the White Lion, Cromwell’s men were well ensconced. Supported by reinforcements, they held off an attack from the King’s men, who retreated to Worcester, where a week later the Civil War was settled for good and Charles fled to France. If only the Royalists had stuck to Malvern water at the White Lion, English history might be different.

Today the hotel is owned and run by chef Jon Lear and his wife Chris, who have spent a lot of time and effort over the past 13 years refurbishing and restoring the old place to much of its former glory.

Jon said: “We’ve even installed antique brass beds.” That, surely, is something that would have pleased the lustful Tom Jones no end. Eighteenth century dramatist and author Henry Fielding was a regular guest at the White Lion and when he wrote his novel The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling in 1749, part of it was based at the hotel – he called it the Inn at Upton – where Tom enjoyed bouncing on a bed or two.

Fielding mentions the Rose Room and the Wild Goose Room, both of which are still in use today.

In 1997, when the BBC produced its TV version of Tom Jones, many of the cast stayed at the White Lion, so you had the voice of Brian Blessed echoing along the corridors, which no doubt put the shivers up the resident ghost.

This is allegedly the apparition of one Captain Bounds, a highwayman and philanderer from the 1700s, who had three wives – at least two of whom he is supposed to have murdered. A bounder indeed.

Of course, there is always a certain difficulty proving the existence or otherwise of a ghost, but Jon Lear took things into his own hands one day when a couple of sceptical workmen arrived. He hid in a rarely used cellar with a white bedsheet over his head. When they gingerly entered by torchlight he waited a while and then suddenly sprang up with a suitably ghostly wail. The men got jammed on the ladder trying to get out.

Jon said: “By the look of the building and particularly the roof space, I should think that at one time it was a row of four properties. It used to have a black and white frontage, but this was rendered over in Georgian times.

“The town’s livestock market was also held at the back, where the car park now is and there are still marks where the pens used to be. On market days the hotel would be full of farmers.

Jon said: “There was an open alleyway at the side of the building linking High Street and the market.

"This has been bricked in now and the space incorporated into the restaurant area, but cattle and sheep used to be driven down it on their way to market.”

Today Jon and Chris pride themselves on using fresh local produce in their restaurant – something which patrons of the past would have took for granted.

So, as the White Lion celebrates its 500th birthday, let’s raise a glass of “strong water” to the place that changed the face of history and where Tom Jones stood and delivered.