Mountain Daisy Public House

The Mountain Daisy Public House, dated 1901, was designed by W and TR Milburn and is situated on Hylton Road, Sunderland. It is a substantial brick building with a black granite plinth, red granite bar front pilasters, sandstone ashlar dressings, and a Welsh slate roof with a lead dome, stone gable copings, and brick chimneys. The building is in an L-plan, with a square tower at the corner facing Cromwell Street. The architectural style is Modified Queen Anne.

The exterior has three storeys and 6x5 windows. The bar front, along the south elevation facing Hylton Road and the left return of three bays, features a high dark granite plinth with recessed Scotia moulding to wide windows. Red granite pilasters and stone imposts support multi-keyed stone arches over doors, one bay from each end, and elliptical windows flanking the doors. The windows have shaped aprons to the first floor sill string, with the central four being paired under gables and upper glazing bars, topped by flat brick arches with moulded long triple stone keys. The second floor sashes have sill and impost strings; the left window has a segmental-headed aedicule rising through ashlar bands to the tower eaves roundel, topped with a ball finial. A similar aedicule and finial are present on the right end window. Shaped gables over the paired intermediate windows have central pilasters; slit lights are set within raised segmental pediments, and ball finials top the structure. The steeply pitched roof has tall ashlar corniced end and mid-slope chimneys. A convex square dome sits atop the corner tower. The left return features two doors, three varied gables, a blind bay rising as a chimney stack with a sunflower/daisy motif in the first floor panel, and three-light windows below a second-floor oriel.

The interior of the public house reveals alterations to the front bar, but halls, doors and other rooms remain largely unchanged. The halls feature a dado, Art Nouveau doors and fittings, a closed string stair with moulded square balusters, a top gallery, a panelled newel, and grip handrails. A rear left sitting room is characterised by fully tiled walls and fittings, including painted tile pictures of Durham Cathedral, Newcastle High Level Bridge, Monkwearmouth Railway Bridge, Finchale Priory, Marsden Rock, Bamburgh, and Cragside, signed “Craven, Dunhill & Co. Ltd. Jackfield” (with minor variations in the signature). Details include a dado with frieze, a quadrant corner bar, rich colours and patterns, and a stucco modillion ceiling cornice to a pressed paper ceiling. Painted glass window panels above renewed bench seats depict pseudo 17th-century inn scenes of eating and drinking. A landing window features a similar picture, accompanied by a rhyming toast in the local dialect. Upper rooms contain Art Nouveau bar fittings and chimney-pieces, and a large room above has pilasters and a coved ceiling with scroll brackets.