The Sun Inn

THE SUN INN, LEINTWARDINE

A public house and house, probably originally a pair of cottages, dating from the late 18th or early 19th century.

The building is constructed of coursed stone rubble with a Welsh slate roof and brick stacks. The west gable wall and the rear outshuts are built of brick. It is of single depth with two storeys, and single storey outshuts extending across the rear.

The front elevation has four irregularly spaced bays with two doors, though only the right-hand door remains in use. Both doors are fitted with simple triangular porches of 20th century date. The windows have stone sills and lintels. The first floor windows are 4/8 sashes; on the ground floor the central window is an 8/8 sash whilst the right-hand window is a later 8/8 wooden casement. A small late 20th century wooden casement has been inserted to the left of the redundant door. The east gable end has an 8/8 sash to the first floor. To the rear are brick single storey outshuts containing urinals and, to the left, a kitchen. Above these are two small wooden casement windows, with the right-hand example retaining square leaded lights. The rear wall stacks are finished with brick banding. The pub sign hangs from a post to the right of the building.

The interior retains its original plan form, with a public room to the right of the entrance hall and a parlour to the left. The public room is sparsely appointed, with a late 19th century brick fire surround and red tiled floor, furnished with simple wooden benches and chairs and a plank screen with armrest beside the window. The entrance hall has timber planking affixed to the walls as back rests. The parlour has tongue and groove matchboarding to dado level. The wooden mantelpiece and cupboards remain, though the fire grate was replaced in the mid 20th century. The kitchen to the left serves as beer store and servery, with wooden racks beneath the stairs for kegs and narrow wooden shelves for glassware storage. The outshut behind the kitchen has late 19th century joinery and cupboards. Both kitchen and outshut have flagstone floors. The first floor is accessed by two simple wooden stairs from the kitchen and hallway.

Trade directories indicate that The Sun became a licensed house between 1861 and 1871 and has remained continuously in use as a public house since that time. It is one of only approximately fifteen pubs surviving in the UK without a bar counter, and represents one of the three or four best remaining examples of a basic rural pub, a building type once common but now extremely rare. The retention of its original plan form, where ale is stored and served in one room and drunk in another without separation from the private domestic spaces, together with the absence of modernisation, makes it an intact and significant surviving example of the early development of the public house.