The Forester Public House

The Forester Public House, dating to 1909, was designed by Thomas Henry Nowell Parr for the Royal Brewery of Brentford. It is constructed of rendered brick with a granite plinth and has a gabled plain tile roof with corniced brick stacks. The building is an example of the Domestic Revival style. It is a two-storey building with three-bay elevations facing both Leighton Road and Seaford Road. A continuous ground-floor frontage, set on a granite plinth and divided by piers with green tile facings, is linked by decorative iron railings above a dentilled cornice and plain fascia. There are original half-glazed doors behind a rounded open porch with Tuscan columns to the corner, and two segmental-pedimented porches with Tuscan columns to Leighton Road. A bracketed pediment features over the half-glazed door to the public bar in the centre of the Seaford Road elevation. The tripartite wood-mullioned and transomed windows have 4-centred arches to the lower lights and stained glass to the upper lights. The first floor has gauged red brick cambered arches over 3-light sashes flanked by shutters; two outer bays to Leighton Road have similar sashes in bow windows set beneath carved brackets supporting projecting gables with dentilled cornices, which are continued around to the Seaford Road elevation. A similar gable is above the cornice, and a recessed first-floor bay is present. The left-hand return has a conservatory to the front of the projecting bay, with a French window and flanking windows incorporating glazing bars and stained glass upper lights. The interior retains a complete pub layout, with a public bar to the right of a large saloon bar, which opens onto a restaurant to the rear. Features include beamed ceilings, panelled dados, neo-Georgian fireplaces, a mahogany bar counter with pilasters framing mirrors, Tudor-arched doors with pedimented screens to the saloon, panelled bar partitions in the saloon bar, and benches with turned balusters in the public bar. The Forester is considered to be the most celebrated of Nowell Parr's pub designs; it represents a transition between the ornate, compartmented pubs of the 1890s and the more restrained neo-Georgian and Tudor open-plan pubs of the inter-war period.