The Castle Tap, 120 Castle Street

A public house, believed to have been rebuilt in the mid-C19 on the site of an earlier coaching house. Formerly listed as Horse and Jockey Public House, Castle Hill, Castle Street.

MATERIALS: the building is of red brick in Flemish bond with stucco cornice and plat band and glazed red brick to the door surrounds. The roof covering is slate.

PLAN: the building is on a roughly rectangular plan running north from Castle Hill, at the southern end of a long, narrow plot. The principal, two-storey portion of the building is L-shaped, with a rear projection running north from the main building along the western boundary of the plot. Later single-storey extensions have infilled the L-shape and extended the building’s footprint further back into the rear yard.

EXTERIOR: the primary elevation on Castle Street is two bays wide, the eastern bay of which is slightly recessed. The western ground-floor bay contains a large fixed window under a gauged brickwork flat arch while the eastern half contains two matching tall and narrow doorways. The doorways sit within and are separated by glazed brickwork pillars. Each doorway consists of a half-glazed two-panelled door, above which is a fanlight with etched glazing followed by a moulded and rendered architrave, and a further rectangular fanlight containing etched glazing above that. The doorways sit under flat arches in gauged brickwork. The first floor contains two six-over-six sash windows with horns, set within large rectangular recesses with gauged brickwork flat arches. A plat band runs just beneath the first-floor sills and continues onto the eastern elevation of the building. A broad cornice projects from the southern elevation which, like the plat band, matches that of the neighbouring property at 122 Castle Street.

The building has been extended to the rear on three occasions. The northernmost of these, adjoining the older, red-brick part of the pub, is flat-roofed, while the two southern extensions, which are of different phases, span the width of the plot. The eastern of the two appears to be earlier and is of red brick with a rendered bottom half and a mono-pitched roof sloping north. The south-western extension is of late C20 or early C21 and has a flat roof. The rear yard is paved.