The Pheasant

This is a large house, now a public house, located on New Street in Worcester. It is believed to have first become an inn in the late 18th century and was recorded as the Pheasant Inn on an 1886 Ordnance Survey map. The core of the building dates to the late 16th century, with alterations and extensions made subsequently, including major structural repairs around 1984. It was possibly originally built for George Stinton.

The house is timber-framed with rendered infill panels, thought to be brick, and has a plain clay tile roof. The original layout was L-shaped, with a stair turret at the angle and a pedestrian passage on the left, which was widened in the 18th century to serve as a coach entrance.

The exterior is three storeys high, with the upper storeys jettied. It has four first-floor windows. The timber framing exhibits a mixture of close-studding and square panels, with some herringbone decoration. The partially renewed bressumer to the second floor has a stepped cyma moulding. The coach entrance features carved and gilded console brackets, with several posts incorporating slender pilasters, a plinth and capital, also supporting console brackets. The roof has two purlins per slope. Most first-floor windows are 6/6 sashes, with those on the left and right being tripartite with 4/4 flanking sashes. Side-hung casements are located to the left of the right-hand window. The ground-floor windows to the centre and right are 3-light mullion and transom windows with renewed square leaded panes, and a frieze with applied carved and gilded decoration and cornice. Leaded casements are found on the second floor. The left-hand return, which also forms a party wall with No.26, is mainly brick, while the right-hand return is horizontal weatherboarding over square panel framing.

The ground-floor front room has a beamed ceiling with four panels, where the beams have drawn-out plaster moulding defining the borders of each panel. A similar arrangement is present to the left, across the carriageway partition, and also on the first and second floors. A room on the first floor to the left features stop-chamfered beams to a 6-panel ceiling with traces of black-line decoration in the wall infill panels. Panelling is found in the left-hand room. A late 16th-century staircase, a remarkable survival, has turned balusters and a moulded handrail.

The house represents a notable survival of a late 16th-century town house, retaining interior features and clear evidence of its original plan.