Plough House the Steps

This is a mid-18th century inn, now divided into two dwellings, incorporating features from the late 14th and 15th centuries. It is constructed of coursed squared marlstone with some ashlar dressings and wooden lintels, and has a concrete plain-tile roof with brick stacks. The building originally had a 3-unit through-passage plan, but is now subdivided. It is two storeys high plus an attic, partly raised over a semi-basement. The front has a four-window arrangement. The left side features 3-light casement windows from the 18th or early 19th century on both floors, except for the first bay, where an entrance to The Steps has reduced the window to 2 lights. A chamfered plinth includes a cellar window with a moulded stone surround and a larger window, which was formerly a sunken doorway. On the right side, a moulded string rises over a tall 3-light casement which retains traces of a wider, earlier stone-mullioned window. A doorway on the left is likely a 18th-century addition, while an earlier doorway on the right, with a chamfered stone surround, is now a window. The first floor has two 4-light stone-mullioned windows with labels. The steep-pitched roof has a gable parapet to the left, featuring projecting moulded kneelers, and stacks to the right of the first bay and to the right gable.

Inside, there are 17th-century spine beams with double-ovolo-mouldings on the ground and first floors, along with a large 17th-century Tudor-arched stone fireplace with ovolo moulding. A further early-18th-century stone bolection-mould fireplace includes a moulded mantel and panelled overmantel. A roof truss in The Steps, set against the left gable, may be medieval, featuring a strutted post between tiebeam and collar. The semi-basement beneath The Steps, accessible from the cellar of Plough House, contains a fine 2-bay late 14th/15th-century vaulted room, characterised by deep chamfered ribs and tiercerons springing from wall shafts with moulded octagonal bases and capitals. The wall facing the road, now mostly below ground level, has remains of a moulded doorway flanked by blocked traceried windows. Although it could represent the ground floor of a small medieval house, it may also have been a solar undercroft adjacent to a hall that is now part of Plough House. Part of a service bay might survive at Mallards. The building operated as an inn by 1774.