The Sale

The Sale is a hotel, later a public house, constructed in 1878 by Lockwood, Smith & Heathcote, with a billiard room extension added in 1905 by Whitelegg & Whittaker. The building is constructed of purple and red brick with stone dressings, and has a slate roof with lead finials.

The layout is rectangular, with a projecting tower wing to the east and a lower billiard room extension to the west. The two-storey building has a higher projecting bay to the east and a taller tower beyond. It features a central, altered entrance beneath a large, mullioned square staircase window. To the west is a projecting bay, with a three-light projection replacing the original arched entrance. Casement windows are set beneath overhanging eaves carried on slender wooden brackets. The canted left-hand bay has triple windows with side-lights, set between stone cills and lintels, and a low canted window is situated above a battlemented parapet. To the east, a single-storey entrance is beneath a slate roof, with half-timbering to its eastern face, leading to an octagonal tower with narrow windows reflecting the staircase within, topped with a continuous window beneath a steeply pitched slate roof. The tower is attached to a four-storey block. The west return elevation is gabled and tile-hung, displaying a projecting penticed window at first floor level.

The interior has been considerably altered, with no original fixtures remaining in the ground-floor public spaces. The main wooden staircase is intact, featuring an open string with moulded posts, fretted square section uprights, and a fan ornament beneath the treads. A secondary staircase has an upswept handrail and similar fretting. An open trussed roof is present in the billiard room extension.

Originally known as the Moorfield Hotel and opened in 1879, The Sale was part of a development by John and Marmaduke Witty, who had acquired the existing Sale Botanic Gardens and Pleasure Grounds. These gardens were short-lived, closing in 1896-7, and the land was subsequently developed for housing, part of which still exists, providing the historical context for the hotel. The hotel was extended in 1905 with a billiard room, replacing an earlier billiards room formed by filling an archway. Significant internal alterations occurred in the 1960s, leading to the removal of many Victorian fittings.