The Palm Tree public house, Mile End

The Palm Tree public house, Mile End

Public house of 1935, designed by Eedle and Meyers for Truman's Brewery.

The building is constructed from buff brick laid in Flemish bond with red brick dressings. The ground floor is clad in cream faience and ceramic tiles. Window frames are timber with leaded glass, and the roof is slate with brown brick stacks.

The pub stands detached but was originally built as a corner piece to two terraces of houses running to the north-west and south-west, so its principal elevations face north-east and south-east. The building is mainly three storeys with a cellar, stepping down to two storeys and then a single storey at the north-west end. At the junction of the principal elevations is a canted corner which holds the main entrance: a half-glazed door with two fielded panels and a leaded overlight. Rising above this through the upper two storeys is a faience panel with a moulded border, bearing the Truman's eagle emblem in deep relief, a label with applied brass lettering reading "ESTD 1666" and the name of the pub below, and a separate plaque at the top inscribed with the brewery name. The canted bay is crowned with a small brick chimneystack with stone cladding.

The ground floor is entirely clad in faience and tiling, with simple vertical strips with decorated heads creating the effect of pilasters between doors and windows. A fascia runs along the principal elevations. The south-east elevation has three bays with a central half-glazed door beneath a moulded canopy supported on console brackets. There is a wide window to either side with leaded glass in the lower sections and tiled green aprons. The upper floors have a single six-over-six panel sash to each bay, surrounded by red brick with rubbed brick arches and projecting cills. In the central first-floor window the ground floor faience continues upward to form the architrave. The north-east elevation is treated similarly, with four bays of three storeys, two bays of two storeys and a single storey bay at the end (formerly with a roof lantern). This elevation has three entrances: one to the former off-sales counter, one to the saloon bar, and one beneath a faience panel to the stairs to the first floor. A band of vertically laid brick lines the base of the parapet, topped with a course of faience and dressed stone.

The interior originally consisted of two bars separated by the staircase to the upper floors. The former public and private bars and off-sales area have been opened up to form a single bar room. Original matchboard tongue and groove panelling lines the walls beneath dado level, with skirtings, picture rail and moulded cornice. A curved counter arcs around an original free-standing bar stillion with its shelving intact, an unusual feature more often replaced with refrigerators. The counter is fronted in matchboarding with doors providing access to beer engines and pipes, a recessed tiled plinth and a chequered tiled border. The canopy and shelves above the counter are later additions. In the former private bar is a moulded timber chimneypiece on the south-west wall and an original baffle screen to the left of the doorway. The former off-sales compartment retains a pair of pot shelves (possibly original), an original gas lamp close to the counter, a hinged bar counter and access door.

The saloon bar to the north, accessed from the furthest door along the north-east elevation, remains almost entirely unchanged since construction. It features fielded dado panelling on the walls and on the curved bar counter, bar back, chequered counter edge tiling and chimneypiece. The counter canopy and shelves are later additions. In the northern portion of this single-storey room is a skylight, now covered over. A dartboard cabinet, possibly from the original pub, was reinstalled in the late 20th century. Unlike the public bar, which originally had only gentlemen's toilets, the saloon was served by male and female toilets set either side of the fireplace; both remain largely unaltered with original doors, door furniture, tilework and in the gents' a Royal Doulton urinal.