The building is of three storeys, with a prominent bay window on the ground floor, and faced with white stucco which dates from the early nineteenth century.

[1] The inn, and surrounding court, were rebuilt in 1839, following the redevelopment of Priory Street, a reconstruction to which the prolific Monmouth architect George Vaughan Maddox contributed.

The White Swan was appropriated for a billet by a Troop of the 12th Lancers when the Chartist Trials took place in the Shire Hall in 1840.

This event caused great consternation amongst the "respectable folk" of the town who feared a revolution and thought that the Lancers were there to protect them.

In Church Street, the rather irregular bow window to the chemists by the entrance to White Swan Court, which the poet laureate John Betjeman said "must never be demolished".