The Masons Arms public house and outbuilding

The Masons Arms public house and outbuilding

A former public house of around 1800 which was extended around 1900, and a detached outbuilding of similar date.

Materials

Both buildings are constructed in blocks of local Wilmington Blue Lias limestone with red brick details. The stone in both is laid in courses, with the courses having different heights. All roofs are covered in clay tiles, and doors and windows are timber. There is a brick section to the rear of the outbuilding.

The Public House

Plan and form

The pub faces south to the road and has a main block of two storeys plus an attic level, oriented roughly east and west. This main block has two additions to the east end: a single-storey wing to the front which projects forward from the line of the main block, and a later two-storey addition behind it. These additions are also oriented east and west with gable ends to the east. A single-storey porch extends further south to the street from the single-storey wing. A small single-storey store is situated at the north-west corner.

Exterior

All roofs are pitched with gable ends. A wide, rebuilt brick chimney rises through the apex of the east gable of the main block and a smaller brick stack rises through the base of the south slope of the two-storey rear wing. Openings are generally under segmental brick arches. Windows are varied, with some multi-paned examples with central opening casements dating to the earliest phase of the building. There are sashes which correspond with the alterations made around 1900; these generally have an eight-light top sash and single pane lower sash with horns. Some of these have smaller four-over-one sashes to the margins forming a triple window. There is also a variety of mid and late twentieth-century windows. The top three courses of the stone walls beneath the eaves of the main block are thin and stepped up outwards to form a slight overhang on the front and back elevations.

At ground floor level, the front south-facing elevation of the main block has two central single doorways, the one to the left is blocked and the right has a twentieth-century timber door. There is a twentieth-century large top-hung 12-over-12 light round-headed window either side of the doorways. The first floor has two round-headed 18-light triple windows, these are centred over the windows below but are not as tall. The front single-storey wing to the east has a large window with 28 lights central to its south elevation. Projecting further south at right-angles from the east end of the single-storey wing is a porch with a rubbed-brick flat arch lintel over a twentieth-century timber door. Behind the single-storey wing is the south roof slope of the two-storey block added around 1900.

The west elevation is solid except for a lunette window in the gable and off-centre below that at first floor level a small twentieth-century window. There is a small single-storey outshot to the north-western corner.

At ground floor level, the rear north-facing elevation of the older part of the building has two openings to the late twentieth-century conservatory (excluded from this listing): a single door width opening to the west end, and a double opening centrally. At the eastern end, in the rear wing of around 1900, is a triple sash window. First floor windows are, from west to east: a round-headed 12-light casement under a segmental brick lintel, two twentieth-century single-pane windows, a triple sash in a projecting bay under a pitched roof, then in the east wing is a triple sash and a narrower four-over-one sash.

The east elevation of the main block at attic level has a lunette window matching that in the west gable, with the pinnacle of the gable truncated by the chimney. Below this is the gable end of the two-storey addition to the north of around 1900, then moving south: a short flat roof, the gable end of the single-storey wing, then the side of the front porch. Windows here are late-Victorian sashes with a casement to the porch. Heading north from the two-storey wing is the late twentieth-century toilet block then conservatory.

Interior

The building has four stone vaulted cellar rooms, with a barrel chute in blue bricks leading from the south-eastern room to the hatch east of the main block of the pub. Stone steps lead up to the north-eastern corner of the kitchen.

The ground floor has some concrete floors and some flagstone. The western rooms have been used as a commercial kitchen and extended eastwards to incorporate what was the hallway to the blocked western doorway of the pair in the front of the main block. Larger ceiling beams are visible in the kitchen and eastern bars, and the central hall area has joists and spine beams visible.

The central fireplace which rises through the eastern gable of the main block is sealed off, but the smaller one at the rear of the eastern single-storey wing remains in a stone surround. A simple wooden winder staircase leads up from the back of the entrance hall to first and attic floors. Some of the upper floor bedrooms retain fire surrounds. The roof structure retains its original purlins, with some rafters having been replaced.

The Outbuilding

Six metres to the west of the public house stands a detached outbuilding.

Exterior

This comprises two abutting, double height, single-storey buildings with the western building having a slightly higher ridge height and shallower pitch to the roof than the eastern. Walls have occasional S-shaped ties. There is a single-storey addition to the rear in two phases: stone to the west and brick to the east.

The south road-facing elevation has two 12-light casement windows to the east end at ground floor level, a large twentieth-century window below the eaves in the central part of the western section, and a small round-headed opening with a grille to its lower part at ground floor at the west end of the building. All the openings have blue brick cills, and those at lower level have segmental red brick lintels. The west gable elevation is solid except for a single large opening at the upper level. The east gable end has an inserted triple garage door and a 12-light casement above. The east end of the brick addition is lit by a small window then a larger lunette. The upper part of the north elevation is covered by a catslide continuation of roof slope over the rear addition which has a variety of openings.

Interior

The western building is deeper and higher than the eastern. The addition to the rear is divided into three discrete store rooms to the eastern end, and a long room which spans both front buildings to the west and allows access through to the western building only. Internal walls are a mixture of stone, brick and concrete blockwork. Floors are concrete, and much of the roof structure is twentieth-century.