The Crown Including Service Buildings Adjoining To North

The Crown

A public house dating from the mid to late 17th century, with modifications from the 19th and 20th centuries. The building stands in Old Groombridge, forming part of an important group of heritage structures associated with nearby Groombridge Place.

The main structure is timber-framed on coursed sandstone footings. Most of the exterior is clad with peg-tiles, but the front wall has been rebuilt or faced with Flemish bond red brick featuring decorative burnt headers. The building has brick chimney stacks, including an east stack with a tall stone base and a west stack of early brick with divided shafts. The roof is peg-tiled.

The building follows a traditional three-room plan facing south, with an unheated central entrance hall, a kitchen to the left (west) with an end stack, and a parlour to the right (east) with a projecting gable-end stack. A single-room rear block extends at right angles to the parlour and shows no signs of being earlier than the 19th century; it has a rear gable-end stack. The main block represents the oldest part of the building. The structure rises to two storeys with attics formed in the roofspace.

The front elevation has three irregular windows of 19th-century sash design, some replaced with horned versions. The ground floor left contains a wide 15-pane sash, while the remaining windows are 12-pane sashes, with tripartite sashes at the right end. The front doorway, positioned left of centre, contains a 20th-century plank door set in a 19th-century frame beneath a flat hood supported on shaped brackets. Three hip-roofed dormers containing leaded casements with diamond panes project from the gabled roof. The rear features 20th-century casements. A lean-to outshot constructed of coursed sandstone suggests early or original construction.

Interior features are substantially preserved despite ground floor partition alterations made to create larger bar space. All ground and first floor rooms contain chamfered and scroll-stopped axial beams. Both ground floor fireplaces are brick with chamfered oak lintels, mostly featuring scroll stops. The parlour chamber displays a similar fireplace, with the hearth supported on a pair of timber plates projecting from the chimneybreast with shaped ends. The roof comprises three bays carried on tie-beam trusses of substantial scantling timbers and A-frame trusses with clasped side purlins and queen struts.

The parlour chamber is lined with 17th-century small field oak panelling and retains a 17th-century moulded plaster cornice. An early doorway into this room, now blocked, has a bead-moulded solid frame.

Service buildings adjoin the main house to the north. A single-storey service wing extends at right angles behind the rear block, containing a two-room plan with a brick axial stack between them. The front room is old, while the rear room was rebuilt in the 20th century. The wing is brick-built. Behind this stands an L-plan stable block, predominantly weatherboarded with a coursed sandstone south wall to the east wing. Both rear wings have half-hipped peg-tile roofs.

The Crown represents an important mid to late 17th-century building associated with the contemporary rebuilding of Groombridge Place (circa 1660-1670) and forms a significant part of one of Kent's most intact groups of historic structures.