Kings Arms Public House

Inn, now public house, probably early to mid-16th century, remodelled in the mid-17th century and altered in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. The building is rendered stone with Stonesfield-slate and Welsh-slate roofs, with rubble-and-brick stacks.

The structure follows a two-unit through-passage plan with a long cross-wing, rising two storeys plus an attic. The four-window front is dominated by a central gabled rectangular two-storey bay window with six-light stone-mullioned windows below flat label moulds on both floors. To the left, the gable wall of the cross-wing features a similar bay window at ground-floor level only, now without its mullions, topped by a 16-pane sash above. A third bay window, probably of early 18th-century date, contains a six-light casement with two 16-pane sashes above. These bay windows are linked by a 20th-century flat canopy sheltering fielded six-panel doors set between the projections. The steep-pitched roof has a brick gable stack to the right, with returns on the left serving the two-window cross-wing, which has a large projecting lateral stack in line with the main range. The wing contains 18th and 19th-century casements and a 19th-century stone rear gable wall. The rear of the main range has 20th-century extensions partly masking a massive rendered lateral stack with numerous offsets, and a gabled stair projection which is probably a 17th-century addition.

The interior of the main range retains the moulded heads of the through-passage partitions, with the left partition showing wide mortices for a plank screen. The room to the right, probably originally unheated, contains stop-chamfered spine and lateral beams. The room to the left features a large rubble-arched open fireplace with heavy stop-chamfered intersecting and lateral beams; a small Tudor-arched wooden doorway leads to the cross-wing. These rooms are now combined into a bar. The stair projection to the rear of the right room contains a mid to late-17th-century open-well stair with large turned balusters and a square handrail; the lowest balustrade extends upwards with two further tiers of contemporary balusters. The first floor retains remains of a chamber fireplace where the bressumer chamfer originally returned down the jambs. The roof structure originally comprised three bays separate from the cross-wing roof and retains a timber-framed left gable with closely-spaced studs, now internal, with a similar truss over the through-passage; between them is an arch-braced collar truss with a later tiebeam. The roof was probably reconstructed with new purlins and an attic floor in the 17th century following structural failure, but retains massive rafters and two curved windbraces.

The cross-wing contains a long room with smaller stop-chamfered intersecting beams and perimeter beams dividing the ceiling into eight panels. The rear room has a heavy chamfered beam with closely-spaced unchamfered joists. A timber-framed cross-passage with a later stair divides the range at both floors. The roof is much altered and reinforced but retains at least one arch-braced collar truss. Neither roof shows smoke blackening, though the principal first-floor room in each range was probably originally open to the rafters. This is a rare example of partial timber-framing used in a stone-building region.