The Orchard Spot Public House

The Orchard Spot is a house, now a public house, dating back to the 15th century, with significant alterations and additions made in the late 16th or early 17th century and the 19th century. It is timber framed, with a rendered front elevation from the 19th century, where one first-floor tension brace is exposed. The left gable end has close-studded work on the first floor. The roof is covered with plain tiles.

The building is of Wealden type, originally comprising four timber-framed bays: two open hall bays of roughly equal length, and storeyed end bays. It stands two storeys high on a painted stone plinth. The right and left end bays were formerly jettied to the front, with the jetties returning along the gable ends. These jetties were underpinned in the 19th century, with the exception of the one to the left gable end. The interior features arch braces to a flying wall-plate and a solid bracket under a central tie. The roof is hipped with gablets. There is a projecting rendered stack towards the rear of the left gable end, and a truncated, slightly-projecting painted stack towards the front. The hall stack is not visible above the ridge.

The fenestration is irregular, with three small wooden casements: one 2-light casement to the left bay, another to the right hall bay, and one single-light casement to the left hall bay. There are no windows to the right end bay. A hollow-chamfered 4-centred arched door architrave with hollow spandrels is located at the left end of the hall, leading to a boarded door on the left side of a small lobby created behind the architrave.

A single-bay 19th-century addition extends to the rear of the right end bay. The right gable end of the Wealden structure and the right gable end have been incorporated into a 19th-century entrance front, featuring regular fenestration of three casements to the first floor, canted ground-floor bay windows, and a central half-glazed door under a Doric porch.

The ground floor interior reveals exposed timber framing of heavy scantling, including beams and broad, close-set joists in the end bays. There are two 4-centred arched, hollow-chamfered service doorways with hollow spandrels, together with a similar 4-centred arched rear doorway to a cross-passage. The central truss posts are doubly hollow-chamfered. A moulded end-of-hall beam is present on the right side, brattished and with close-studded partitionwork beneath it. Hollow-chamfered hall window cills are found to the front and rear of the right hall bay, the rear cill incorporating the remains of an blocked 8-light diamond-mullion window. A substantial, plain-chamfered late 16th or early 17th century inserted cross-beam and axial beam, with bevelled joists, are in the right hall bay. A fireplace has plain stone jambs and a cambered bressumer, backing onto the cross-passage. The building was formerly known as Otham Grove.