The Five Ways Public House

The Five Ways Public House

A public house with attached garden terrace and wall, built in 1936-7 by A E Eberlin of Nottingham for Warwick & Richardson, brewers of Newark. A function room was added after 1945. The building is designed in Neo-Tudor style and is prominently sited at an important road junction, intended as a flagship building for the brewers.

The structure comprises an L-shaped plan with two 2-storeyed ranges and single-storeyed sections at their ends, with an angled display gable at the junction. The post-War function room fills the angle of the original ranges.

The ground floor is built in ashlar limestone, whilst the first floor features consciously roughly-cut half-timbering with whitened, rendered infill. Elaborate small-scale box framing and carved barge boards ornament the display gables. The roofs are covered in Swithland slate, with hipped and gabled forms topped by lead rolls to ridges and hips. A ridge stack carries 4 clustered ashlar chimneys, with a secondary stack of two clustered chimneys at the foot of the hip of the main roof.

The west front elevation is symmetrical, featuring a set-back single-storey bay to the left end. A smoke room doorway with moulded surround stands to the left of the 2-storeyed range. To the right is a canted bay window with 1:3:1 transomed lights, followed by the entrance to the former off-sales area (now with late 20th-century joinery), a 3-light transomed window, and an angled corner with a wide former doorway with late 20th-century infill and flanking narrow single-light windows. Above the canted ground floor bay sits a rectangular projection with a 3-light transomed window beneath a gable decorated with a foliage frieze at its base and pierced barge boards with foliage detail. The gable is infilled with small panels featuring concave-sided lozenges. This projection is flanked by single and 2-light transomed windows. The angled corner rises to a gable with matching detailing to the west elevation, beneath which sits a carved and decorated tie beam bearing the brewers' emblem 'W & R'.

The south elevation features a ground floor with a wide doorway to the lounge bar, flanked by 3-light transomed windows. Further right stands a tall canted bay window with 1:3:1 transomed lights. The lounge, under its own pitched roof, is single-storey and has a tall mullioned and transomed-light window on its gable wall. Two half-timbered gables stand at the rear. A later extension has timber windows and a plain parapet. Contemporary glass in the doorways bears the names 'Smoke Room' and 'Lounge'.

The interior retains substantially complete survival of original fittings, which is increasingly rare in inter-War public houses. The smoke room to the west range features high rectangular panelling with Jacobean detail to its frieze, a glazed hatch to the servery, and a Neo-Tudor fireplace with Jacobean detailing to the overmantel, along with fixed seating. The corridor is panelled throughout; in the angle enclosing the servery are two hatches with glazed tops and sashes. The rear corridor contains a dumb waiter to the cellar and a mirror set above the panelling. At the centre of this corridor is an expanded space with a skylight above, opening to a passage to the former garden entrance. The lounge features a plastered segmental ceiling marked by two plaster bands with vine trails and grapes defining three bays, each bay decorated with foliage bands. The public bar retains some contemporary fixed seating. A contemporary bar back runs throughout the servery, furnished with shelving and plain mirrors. The later function room contains 4 reused 19th-century cast-iron columns with foliage and animal head detail in the capitals. Doors to the toilets and cellar retain their original lettering.