Swan Hotel

Swan Hotel

A public house and hotel occupying a significant position on the High Street in Maldon. The building is late 14th century in origin, with a late 16th-century inserted floor and an early 19th-century rear extension. It is timber-framed and pebbledashed with plain tile roofs, arranged to a complex plan form that represents a hall house with two cross-wings and rear extensions on both wings.

The exterior displays two storeys with a cellar, and a three-storey rear extension. The front elevation is distinguished by two gables with a hall range of original ridge height but with a narrow-span parallel front roof providing a two-storey eaves height at the frontage. The gables are of early 20th-century construction with bargeboards and applied timber-framing; the roof of the north-west wing is clad in machine-made tiles. The first floor of the north-west wing has a three-light early 20th-century casement with a square top light containing square leaded panes. The first floor of the south-east gable contains a similar four-light casement. At the centre is a pair of semicircular-headed French windows with side lights of similar design. A painted timber balcony front is mounted on substantial timber posts in the centre of the elevation. A canted bay beneath the balcony has leaded upper lights, and all ground-floor windows display etched glass. Two similar entrance doors are present, one with two stone steps and one with three, each fitted with wrought-iron handrails and boot scrapers. A chimney stack on the rear wall of the main range rises above the ridgeline.

The exposed north-west flank shows two first-floor sash windows with moulded surrounds, each with a single vertical glazing bar, and two similar ground-floor windows. Two recessed windows with moulded architraves and a two-light casement (as on the front elevation) complete this elevation. The rear extension here is rendered with a gabled roof, featuring one two-light casement on the second floor and two sash windows of 16 and 12 panes with moulded surrounds on the first floor. The ground floor is rendered brick with a door incorporating two steps and a tripartite, recessed, small-paned sash. The rear of this block has one sash with moulded surround on the third floor and 20th-century French windows to the ground floor. The courtyard elevation of this building displays an eight-paned fixed window to the third floor and two sashes on the first floor, one with 12 panes and one with a central vertical glazing bar.

Between the two original wings, the rear of the hall range contains a 17th-century gable at right-angles to the main roof. A flat-roofed 20th-century extension occupies the rear of the hall, and a two-storey rendered part-painted brick extension with a gabled roof extends from the rear of the south-west wing.

The interior of the front range represents a late 14th-century timber-framed building of considerable quality, evidently designed to occupy a restricted urban site. The use of unjowled posts, double pegging of floor joists, and adorsed ogee mouldings parallels the front block of the Blue Boar Hotel on Silver Street, possibly by the same carpenter. The hall comprises two bays with a very narrow low-end bay and remains substantially complete above the inserted late 16th-century floor. The latter is supported on a moulded impost and has a chamfered spine beam. The rear north-east wall contains a fireplace, one flank of which incorporates a mixture of brick and reused 12th-century rubble. Also in the rear is a door with a four-centred head leading under a gallery to the parlour in the north-west wing.

The south-east cross-wing is entered through an intruded cross-passage with speres to the hall, formerly surmounted by a contemporary hood over the front door. The wing extends four bays; the front two bays retain original service-door heads and much repaired studwork and wall bracing. The front room originally functioned as a shop, and a recent renovation revealed its original arrangement of shop door and a large window with a low sill and two arch brackets at the head. The third bay from the front contained two staircases: one providing access to a solar over the front two bays, and the other serving a first-floor room at the rear equipped with a garderobe door of arched head in its rear wall. The cross-passage continued to the rear of the wing, and its north-west flank appears to have opened onto a yard. The north-west wing comprises three bays, with its southernmost bay apparently functioning as another shop. The parlour to its rear included a pair of service-room-like spaces to the north. The south-east flank, facing the courtyard, incorporated a purpose-built gallery, the tiny gabled roof of which survives within a later roof structure. This gallery provided first-floor access between a pre-existing building to the north and a large chamber occupying the front two bays of the wing. This chamber featured a continuous band of windows on its front elevation and a coupled arch-headed window on the exposed north-west flank. A hole in the framing indicates the former presence of a contemporary chimney stack. Crown-post roofs survive substantially intact over both wings, with the solar roof of cross-quadrate form. The cross-quadrate hall roof can now only be deduced from surviving mortice holes. Both important first-floor chambers have moulded tie beams on substantial braces with additional moulding orders pegged to their soffits.

In the early 19th century, a brick parapeted front was attached to the building and the gables were removed in favour of hips. An early 20th-century restoration reinstated these features in general form rather than in particular detail.