The Duke of Edinburgh

The Duke of Edinburgh

This public house was built in 1936–7 by architect A E Sewell as an "improved" pub for the brewery Truman, Hanbury, Buxton & Co. Ltd.

The building occupies a narrow rectangular corner plot at Ferndale Road and Bythorn Street. It is faced in thin red bricks laid in English bond with sparing use of stone dressings. The windows are metal casements with square leaded lights, set within moulded brick mullioned and transomed surrounds. The roof is covered in clay tiles.

The pub comprises two main storeys, a cellar, and an attic within a steeply pitched hipped roof. The ground floor of the Ferndale Road façade projects forward with a distinctive splayed corner, a feature common in Truman's inter-war corner pubs. On Ferndale Road the building adjoins circa 1860 terraced housing, while on Bythorn Street it is separated from further terraced housing by a passage that accesses the pub's private entrance and rear garden.

Both the south and west frontages are characterised by flat brick elevations with symmetrically ordered chamfered brick mullion and transom windows. The roof is punctuated by dormer windows and three substantial brick chimneystacks. Sewell's original elevation drawings and an early photograph confirm that the exterior survives as built. The central doorway on Ferndale Road (originally serving the public bar) and the central doorway on Bythorn Street (serving the saloon bar) are both topped by wrought iron screened fanlights. Above these are decorative sculpted stone relief panels in Baroque style with roundels inset with the Truman's eagle emblem. On the north side of the Bythorn Street frontage is a set of rolling-in doors beneath a window, paired internally with cellar flaps that permitted brewery draymen to deliver barrels directly from the street. All windows are original, retaining decorative leaded and stained glazing, and all pub doors remain, though the former saloon bar door is no longer in use.

Internally, the pub survives very little altered and exemplifies Truman's inter-war "house style", featuring embossed branded mirrors, light-coloured oak panelling, and brick and moulded timber fireplaces. Although most internal room divisions have been removed, the original 1937 plan form remains evident in retained original doors to formerly separate bars, remnants of dividing screens, and varied room treatments.

The public bar and games room to the south are the most rudimentary rooms, with simple Truman's matchboard panelling to dado level and panelled bar counter. A shallow arched brick fireplace is retained along with all original fixed benching. Behind the counter is the original tripartite oak bar back with three recessed mirrored panels as back boards, featuring thin octagonal-faced columns beneath three shallow four-centred arches. The bar back screens a private office accessed through a door on the west side of the servery, which remains as built. Original lavatories for men and women, placed at the south-west corner, survive today though now for women only with modern fittings.

The former division between public bar and games room is clear from the remaining upper glazed portion of a screen running perpendicular to the counter and from supporting piers. The bar counter continues, forming the return of that serving the public bar. The games room retains original matchboard panelling and a short stretch of original fixed oak benching. Access now runs through the former off sales department to the saloon bar.

The space formerly used as the off sales department is retained with its original doorway remaining as the main route to the west side of the pub. The counter and two screens that sectioned it from the saloon bar and games room have been removed, though the bar counter now serving this space matches that in the games room and public bar, suggesting the off sales counter may have been relocated in line with the rest of the bar.

The saloon bar fittings and fixtures indicate higher status than the public bar and games room. This area is fitted throughout with picture-rail height fielded panelling and retains its original bar counter with fielded oak panelling, counter doors, and a chequer-pattern tiled border. Behind the counter, the three-part bar back matches that in the public bar. To either side of the bar back, leaded glazed screens project diagonally across the space behind the counter (while allowing staff access), marking the bar counter divide between the saloon bar and the lounge and billiard room on one side and the former off sales department on the other. The saloon retains a fireplace with moulded oak surround and overmantel and an inset Truman's embossed mirror. This fireplace adjoins an L-shaped section of fixed settle-type benching beneath a leaded window to the former adjacent off sales department.

The north end of the building is occupied by what was formerly the large lounge and billiard room, accessed via the saloon bar through a door in a glazed screen, now largely lost though remnants of the side and upper portions survive. As a room type, lounge bars were a new inter-war development, constituting the most socially elite portion of the building. The lounge and billiard room was served by a short counter, formed as the return of the long saloon bar counter and separated by the diagonal screen mentioned above. The room features picture-rail height panelling throughout and has an inglenook fireplace on the east wall containing a broad central stone fireplace with fielded panelling above inset with an embossed Truman's mirror, flanked by leaded stained-glass windows on either side. Fixed settle-type benching is set into the splayed, oak panelled returning walls. The room was served by male and female toilets, both surviving though now for men's use only, flanking the inglenook. At the far end are double doors leading to the passage and garden, modern replacements but retaining original fanlights with leaded and stained glazing.

The upper floors house a kitchen and staff accommodation and were not inspected.