The Bull Public House

The Bull Public House dates from the 1880s and was built on the site of an earlier building, the 'Old Bull', which was destroyed by fire. It is constructed of yellow brick with red brick detailing, and has peg-tile roofs and brick stacks with rendered shafts. The building exhibits an eclectic High Victorian architectural style.

The plan is asymmetrical, originally comprising three rooms plus a single-room block at the west end. Facing north onto the High Street, the lively and well-preserved Victorian brickwork provides a contrast to the older, tile-hung buildings in the village centre. The building is two storeys with an attic. The front elevation features red brick quoins and segmental arches of red brick over the recessed ground floor windows and doors. These arches continue across the front as bands of brick moulded with a guilloche ornament and a nail-head moulding. A moulded red brick corbel table sits below the eaves, above a frieze decorated with roundels. The front gable has red brick toothed banding to the verges, and terra-cotta finials adorn the gables.

Original windows are present throughout, featuring moulded timber mullions, high transoms and segmental-headed mullioned lights above the transom. The front elevation features an asymmetrical three-window arrangement, plus one window to the single-storey block at the far right end. A one-window block at the left, gabled to the front, is paired with a slightly set-back two-window block that has a large half-hipped attic dormer. Two original half-glazed doors are inset into the right-hand block of the main range, flanking a three-light window. Similar three-light windows are found on the ground floor, to the left, and two to the single-storey block at the far right end. Corresponding two- and three-light windows are present on the first floor and in the attic gable and dormer. The single-storey block has a large ventilator on its ridge. The west return of the main range is also largely original.

Inside, some crosswalls between the original rooms have been removed. A carved chimney-piece remains in the left-hand stack, and original joinery, including a stair and doors, is still in place. A photograph from around 1884, published in "A Victorian Pictorial Record of Brenchley and Matfield", depicts the newly-built pub advertising "Good Stables and Coach House".