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A 300-year-old former coaching inn today sold for £27 million, a record for a central London pub.

The extraordinary price for the Black Lion in Bayswater was revealed in a Stock Exchange announcement by pub group Spirit. The buyer is a new Jersey-registered developer called 123 Bayswater Road Ltd, which is expected to turn the building into luxury flats. The Black Lion is close to Queensway, earmarked for a £500 million revamp.

Spirit said it will “continue to run the pub for an agreed period” before the redevelopment begins. The Black Lion made a £700,000 profit last year.

The identity of the 123 owner is not known but a local property source said “an investor is buying up several buildings at that end of Bayswater Road”.

It is also not know if the new owners will shut the Black Lion, first listed as an alehouse in 1704. In 1803 it was used as the registration house for the Paddington Volunteers, formed to fight off Napoleon’s threatened invasion.

The inn is the latest in a series of central London pubs in prime locations sold for colossal sums to developers.

Westminster council is so concerned about the loss of pubs through conversion to homes or shops that it is consulting on a new policy to give them 12 months’ protection after being sold.

The closedpubs.co.uk list shows 3,185 pubs in London have closed in recent years. The most expensive London pub ever sold was the City Pride in Canary Wharf, which went for £32 million in 2008 just before the banking crash.