The Gatekeeper

The Gatekeeper is a public house located on Canterbury Road in Lyminge, originally known as The New Inn. It dates back to the early 17th century, with an addition made in the late 18th or early 19th century and further alterations over time. The building features a timber frame with painted brick on the ground floor. The first floor showcases exposed framing with a mix of herringbone and coursed brick infilling, while the right addition is also made of painted brick. The ground floor of the right return is finished in painted stone, and the roof is covered with plain tiles.

The building has a lobby-entry plan consisting of two timber-framed bays and a central stack bay, rising to two storeys. Each outer bay has a pair of tension braces and intermediate studs. The roof is steeply pitched, hipped to the left with a gablet, and gabled to the right. There is a multiple brick ridge stack towards the centre and a gable-end stack to the right. The windows are irregularly placed, featuring three casements: one two-light casement in each outer bay and one single-light window under the stack. A half-glazed door is located under a flat corniced and bracketed hood. The right addition is also two storeys, with a hipped roof to the right, slightly higher eaves, and a lower ridge than the main range. Its windows include two sixteen-pane sashes with segmental heads, and there is a canted bay on the ground floor with a half-glazed door towards the right end. The main range has a rear lean-to, and there is a short rear return wing to the right.

The interior has only been partly inspected, revealing a chamfered axial beam in the right ground-floor room of the main range, possible evidence for a continuous jetty, and an elliptical brick fireplace with niches and a wooden bressumer on the right side of the stack.