Holly Bush public house

Holly Bush Public House

This public house is a grade II listed building with a 3-room ground floor plan comprising a tap room to the front left, a snug to the front right, and a smoke room set to the rear right behind the main stair. The bar runs along the left side of the smoke room. An L-shaped service range containing kitchens and toilets is attached to the rear, and the pub incorporates an adjacent former cottage attached to the south-eastern side.

The Holly Bush is terraced to cottages on either side and set back at an angle to Palmerston Street, with the front elevation facing south-west. This 3-bay elevation features narrow handmade brick facings laid in stretcher bond with a soldier course set just below the first floor. The centre of the ground floor contains the main entrance: a Tudor-arched doorway with a quoined ashlar surround, containing a panelled door with leaded-glazed top lights incorporating bull's eyes. Flanking the entrance are two 6-light windows with quoined ashlar surrounds and leaded glazing depicting holly bushes in stained glass.

The first floor is rendered with applied timberwork, the render tooled to imitate simple pargeting. It is lit by a 2-light casement window to the centre bay and 3-light casement windows to the outer bays, all with leaded glazing and thickened stanchions giving the appearance of mullions. The centre bay jetties out slightly beneath a small gable supported by plain ashlar corbels. Two short brick stacks sit at each end of the ridge.

The north-west return elevation is similarly constructed with handmade brick to the ground floor and half timberwork above. Immediately to the right of the pub stands a lower, 2-storey former cottage of hammer-dressed buff sandstone now forming part of the pub. It has a window lighting the ladies toilets to the ground-floor left, a large inserted opening with timber doors to the right, and two replaced top-hung multipane casement windows to the first floor.

The pub's rear elevation possibly represents the original rear wall of the earlier building and incorporates windows of varying style and size, including sash windows and a 1930s 6-light window to the ground floor with leaded glazing incorporating bull's eyes and heraldic motifs, which lights the smoke room; one of the upper lights has an inserted ventilator. An attached single-storey L-shaped service range in the rear yard is constructed of similar materials.

Internally, most original 1930s panelled doors survive. An entrance vestibule with herringbone-patterned brickwork side walls and a panelled and leaded-glazed inner door leads into a panelled lobby.

To the left of the lobby is the tap room, which has moulded coving, a picture rail, original fixed-bench seating with a baffle adjacent to the doorway, and a timber, glazed-brick and faience-tile fireplace incorporating a pointed-arched opening. The original 1930s hatch into the smoke-room bar behind has been replaced by a panelled bar counter, believed to have been inserted in the 1960s.

To the right of the lobby is the snug, which has applied timberwork to the walls and a 1930s timber and brick fireplace with a Tudor-arched inner stone surround.

Set immediately behind the snug at a right angle to the entrance lobby is a panelled corridor leading to the ladies toilet, located in the ground floor of the attached former cottage. This toilet has an ante room with a dado of 1930s glazed tiles and an original geometric-patterned tiled floor.

The main stair forms the north-east side of the corridor and has a geometric balustrade with a square newel post topped by a dome cap and chamfering to its upper edges creating an octagonal shape.

The smoke room is located to the rear right of the ground floor and contains original fixed-bench seating (re-upholstered and extended), a baffle, bell pushes, and a glazed brick, faience-tile and timber fireplace incorporating ziggurat shaping to the inner surround and a panelled overmantel. Like the lobby, walls are panelled to picture rail height with moulded coving above.

The smoke room's north-western wall was removed in the 1960s to open the room to the panelled bar servery, which lies alongside the pub's north-west wall and has three leaded-glazed upper screens and a bar back incorporating original shelving and two tall narrow display cases with leaded lights featuring ogee-arched heads and bull's eyes. The servery also contains an annunciator box for the bell-push system, originally denoting where service was required within the pub, but no longer in working order.

Set within the panelled north-east wall of the servery is a doorway containing a 5-panel door leading into the rear service rooms, with two adjacent internal windows with patterned leaded glazing and multipaned overlights. A further glazed multipaned door in the smoke room's north-east wall leads into a rear porch with a tiled floor incorporating the signs of the zodiac.

A plain first-floor club room is contained within the attached former cottage, and the landlord's flat above the main body of the pub has been altered, although panelling on the first-floor landing and some 1930s panelled doors survive.