115 and 115a Friargate (former Plough Inn)

Public house, mid-C18, possibly with origins as a C17 house.

MATERIALS: brick (hand-made) with a slate roof.

PLAN: a linear range in three parts.

EXTERIOR: the building is two storeys tall with a gabled attic. The wall is of hand-made brick laid in English Garden Wall bond, with three stretcher courses between header courses. The attic has 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. The shop front is framed by pilasters with consoles. At the left a six-panel door (flush) and at the right a half-glazed door (recessed), both with overlights, flank a blind shop window with three lights above and a low stall riser tiled in embossed tiles. The stall riser returns in the right-hand doorway, which also has a monochrome-tiled floor.

The side and rear walls are largely obscured by the attached buildings. Towards the rear, the north wall faces onto Plough Yard, and is also of hand-made brick. This two-storey rear block has a flat roof. The rear of the front block is gabled, and largely obscured by the central block, which has a gable of a lower pitch, with a door opening onto the flat roof of the rear block. The central block’s gable is also of hand-made bricks.

INTERIOR: the ground-floor retains a truncated ceiling-beam supported by a cast-iron column with twin barley-twist shafts with decorative capitals, timber ceiling joists and geometric decorative ceilings with boarded walls concealing 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 access the cellar, which retains walls and a shallow-vaulted ceiling of historic brickwork, as well as the rendered mash-pit and still-stand. A circular well lined with dressed buff sandstone blocks descends approximately 14 metres. Above the mouth of the well a ring of five courses of modern brickwork is let into the floor, with a glass cover. 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. A fireplace survives to the rear.