The Freemasons Inn And Restaurant

The Freemasons Inn and Restaurant is a public house with a restaurant, built around 1870 in a classical style, with a later addition dating from 1928 in the Art Deco style. The 1928 restaurant was constructed for the Kemp Town Brewery. The building is an L-shaped corner block, with the restaurant fronting Western Road and the public house returning along Brunswick Street West.

The public house is rendered over brick, with a mansard slate roof. It has three storeys plus an attic, with a one-bay frontage featuring a two-storey oriel bay, ornamented with pilasters and decorative capitals to both the bay and the parapet. The return frontage to Brunswick Street West is four bays, also with oriels and a decorative parapet to a flat-roofed porch which now has a glazed addition.

The restaurant has a rendered second floor and a mosaic of gold, beige and blue around the ground and first floors, with full-height metal windows separated by a metal dado. The roof is concealed behind a parapet. The second floor has a tripartite window, and later 20th-century windows. Original metal windows are found to the ground and first floors of the curved frontage, leading to a recessed entrance with a sunburst design. Masonic symbols appear on the dados, along with a mosaic surround with lettering above the first floor reading 'Freemasons Restaurant / Kemp Town Brewery', and griffin-headed grotesques below. The interior retains almost complete original fittings on both floors, including Art Deco style moulding to the ceiling beams, original light fittings, some built-in furniture, and the original staircase. The restaurant is a fine example of Art Deco styling.