The Labour in Vain is located on High Street on Stow Hill in the Tranch, Pontypool. An 1875 advertisement for the sale of the public house and the cottage attached to it note that it was comprised of a `bar, bar-parlour, smokeroom, large clubroom, kitchen, bedrooms, cellar, brewhouse, &c.? The building is two storeys high: the first storey is of red brick with stone dressings separated by a string course from the second storey which is plastered with red-brick dressings. The entrance is a central single door above which are two small square windows and a central lamp, and to either side of which are narrow arched windows. Above the door there is a second-storey canted oriel window with a large overhang and a domed roof. To left and right of this central area are two two-storey stone and brick bays topped with dormered gables. The dormered gables have barge boards, finials, and pendants, and their facades are timber-framed in style. The bays have pairs of large vertical double windows in both storeys. Under the second-storey windows are signs which read `LABOUR IN VAIN?, while a sign under the oriel window reads `High Street Tranch?. The pub sign formerly displayed a picture of a white woman washing a struggling black child in a circular washtub. The current sign has no image and reads `LABOUR IN VAIN?

(Sources: Welsh Newspapers Online: Western Mail, 05.04.1875)
A.N. Coward, RCAHMW, 04.05.2018