115 and 115a Friargate (former Plough Inn)

This mid-18th century public house, possibly with origins in the 17th century, is constructed of handmade brick under a slate roof. The building comprises a linear range in three parts.

The two-storey main block has a gabled attic. The brick walls are laid in an English Garden Wall bond, with three stretcher courses between header courses. The attic features a round, leaded window, and the first floor has a timber, canted oriel window. The ground floor has a timber shop front with a timber awning box, framed by pilasters with consoles. A six-panel flush door and a half-glazed recessed door, both with overlights, are flanked by a blind shop window with three lights and a low stall riser tiled in embossed tiles. The stall riser extends into the right-hand doorway, which also has a monochrome-tiled floor.

The side and rear walls are largely hidden by adjacent buildings. The north wall, facing Plough Yard, is also of handmade brick and forms a two-storey block with a flat roof. The rear of the front block is gabled, largely obscured by the central block, which has a gable of a lower pitch and a doorway opening onto the flat roof of the rear block. The central block’s gable is also of handmade brick.

The ground floor retains a truncated ceiling-beam supported by a cast-iron column with twin barley-twist shafts and decorative capitals, along with timber ceiling joists and geometric decorative ceilings. Boarded walls conceal some historic wallpaper. Two semi-circular brick arches survive in the north wall, one bricked up and the other opening into a shallow recess. Stone steps lead to a cellar, which contains historic brickwork walls and a shallow-vaulted ceiling, as well as a rendered mash-pit and still-stand. A circular well lined with dressed buff sandstone blocks descends approximately 14 metres, with a ring of five courses of modern brickwork and a glass cover above its mouth. The attic floor retains a reed-and-plaster ceiling, historic roof timbers and a small fireplace. The front first-floor room retains plaster cornicing but is open to the roof, which has machine-sawn king-post trusses and is under-boarded, with a surviving fireplace to the rear.