The George and Dragon

The George and Dragon is an inn dating from around 1880, designed by John Douglas for Rowland Egerton Warburton. It is a building of group value. The inn is constructed of brick with a roughcast upper storey, and has hipped clay-tile roofs.

The building is two storeys high and symmetrical, with a prominent two-storey projecting porch with a pyramid roof. The porch has an oak door on ornate hinges, set within a basket-arched opening. A moulded brick band runs across the first floor. Above the inner door, a stone is inscribed with Warburton's verse: "As Saint George in armed affray / Doth the fiery dragon slay / So may'st thou with might no less / Slay the dragon drunkeness.” A brick-mullioned window with four lights is located above the verse. The eaves are of cavetto plaster.

Each wing of the inn has a brick-mullioned window of four lights in the lower storey and three lights in the upper storey. The roof is steep, with a lucarne (dormer window) in each wing, and a lateral chimney on the left side is linked by a small roof to the hip. The sides and rear wing have no particular architectural features.

A very elaborate pictorial sign is attached to an ornate, long wrought-iron bracket on the right corner of the inn, also dating from the 1880s and made by the estate blacksmith. Oak post-and-rail fences on either side of the porch are inscribed with various phrases: "LIFE IS BUT SEEDTIME AND HARVEST : GOD SPEED THE PLOUGH + WHEN DRINK YOUR ALES (with carved Green Man's head) : REST ALL YE NIGH ALEYARD & KIRKYARD : DO NOUGHT THEREIN BESET WITH SINS : LABOUR MIGHTILY : PROSPER HE WHO BUILDETH ON ROCK : NOUGHT GREAT IS WON WITHOUT PRICE : REMEMBER THEM : BEWARE YE BEELZEBUB : GUARD WELL THY FREEDOM : YEA MAN SHALL REACH OUT AND EVEN SOW SEED UPON STAYS.”

Some interior features by Douglas remain. A stone in the bar is inscribed "NIL NIMIUM CUPITO Mee : R+I : 1722" (Desire nothing in excess). A small section of a 17th-century structure may have been incorporated into the current building. The inn was described in 1884 as “a most pleasing point of interest,” notable for its “Nuremburg sign-piece, steep-tiled roof…. moulded brickwork window jambs and leaded lights”.