The Tavern is listed on the Virginia Landmarks Register and the National Register of Historic Places as part of the Hanover Courthouse Historic District. The District includes the Courthouse (1735 and listed separately as a National Landmark), old jail (1830s), clerk's office (early 19th Century), and the tavern. This set of buildings is a rare surviving example of the county governmental complex once common in Virginia.

The existing structure is a late eighteenth century building with nineteenth century additions/modifications. Located on U.S. 301 in central Hanover County, approximately 15 miles north of Richmond, Virginia, the Tavern has served as a residence, ordinary, inn, tavern, hotel, and more recently as home to a theater group, a restaurant, and a non-profit Foundation. The Tavern has served 18th-19th century travelers arriving on horseback and by stage coach along the Great Northern Stage Road; passengers alighting at the Hanover depot on the Virginia Central Railroad (now CSX); and automobile traffic beginning in the1920s and which increased in the 1930s and thereafter with the construction of US 301 as a link between New England and Florida.

The Tavern was built in five stages and includes more than 12,000 square feet on three levels, 27 rooms, 97 windows, and 16 exterior doors. The earliest surviving section of the present Tavern was built in 1791. The disposition of the earlier tavern is unknown, but fire was a constant hazard in such buildings.

For almost two centuries the Tavern provided meals and lodging to those having business before the Hanover County courts. The Tavern served as post office for the area from the 1790s until 1911. Until Rural Free Delivery was introduced early in the 20th century residents from miles around viewed the Tavern as a community center as they came to the Tavern to pick up their mail and hear the neighborhood gossip.

The Tavern is one of only a few surviving colonial era taverns in the United States. It has hosted such historic figures as George Washington, Lord Cornwallis, and the Marquis de Lafayette. The tavern is mentioned in several travel accounts, including the memoirs of the Marquis de Chastellux, the diaries of George Washington and Dr. Robert Honyman, and the travel account by Benson Lossing, among others.

Four slaves from the Tavern complex participated in Gabriel's Great Slave Rebellion in 1800. Chief Justice John Marshall and Edgar Allan Poe rode the stage and stopped at the Tavern. In his Memoirs, P.T. Barnum recounts an amusing disagreement with the tavern keeper during a visit by the circus troupe in 1836. Charles Dickens wrote of his experiences traveling the old stage road in the 1840s.

In 1953 a group of young actors from New York bought the Tavern and established the Barksdale Theatre, a nationally acclaimed professional theater, and the first dinner theatre in the U.S. In 1990, the Hanover Tavern Foundation acquired the Tavern and the 3.5 acre site. The Foundation is committed to restoring the Tavern, promoting its historic significance and assuring its continued vitality as a community resource.