Former Old White Hart Hotel

FORMER OLD WHITE HART HOTEL, Henley on Thames

Courtyard inn, now restaurant and offices, dating from the 14th to 16th centuries with later alterations and refronted in the 1930s.

The south range is timber-framed with a 1930s brick front, roughcast above ground-floor level with applied framing to gables. The courtyard ranges are timber-framed with end, rear and ground-floor courtyard walls mainly of thin red-brown bricks laid in English bond with diaper patterns in vitrified headers. The jettied gallery structure to the courtyard is timber-framed with plaster infill or weatherboarding. All buildings have pitched roofs of plain clay tile.

The south range originally contained an open hall with a cellar below, later ceiled over to create first-floor accommodation and access to the courtyard behind. The courtyard ranges originally had stabling on the ground floor with a continuous gallery above giving access to around 20 guest chambers; the west range included a second open hall. All buildings have been altered internally, and much of the west range rebuilt.

The south range is a two-storey, two-bay building with a 1930s 'Tudorbethan' façade comprising a bow-windowed brick lower storey and a roughcast first floor with four bracketed cross-casement windows and two projecting half-timbered gables above. A square carriage entrance to the left has timber-framed brick walls and a ceiling of heavy chamfered beams and plain joists.

The east courtyard range has a continuous jettied gallery 1 metre deep, supported on exposed joists and beams with reinforcing posts towards the north end. A projecting middle bay is said to have been a garderobe, or possibly a former stair landing. The first floor is rendered and has five horizontally-sliding sash windows; ground-floor windows are mainly early 20th-century leaded casements. Three ridge stacks rise to the roof. The rear east wall is partly timber-framed.

The north range and short return section of the west range have a shallower jetty, with mortises indicating former jetty brackets. The first floor to the courtyard is weatherboarded with small casement windows. A central carriageway leads to a former rear yard, with a large-scantling chamfered spine beam supporting plain joists. To the right, a 16th-century Tudor-arched doorway with moulded jambs and sunken spandrels has a 20th-century board door; adjoining steps lead down to the cellar. The rear north elevation has two rebuilt projecting stacks and a section of exposed timber framing on the first floor.

The middle part of the west range has been replaced with a single-storey former stable building of painted brick, now with a dormer and small bay window to the courtyard. South of this is the later hall building, of two bays, with 19th-century multi-pane sash windows flanking a central doorway to the ground floor. The jettied first floor has square framing with curved braces, plaster infill panels and early 20th-century small-paned casements. An exposed roof truss appears in the north gable. Blocked window openings are visible in the rear wall. The southern end of the west range is now demolished, though part of the original rear wall survives.

The cellar below the south range is constructed of chalk blocks with two chamfered chalk ribs to a barrel vault. On the ground and first floors, some exposed timber-framing, spine-beams and rafters remain. At the junction with the rear east wing on the first floor is a large-scantling wall-plate with mortises from a former brace. A dog-leg late 18th or early 19th-century stair has stick balusters, a moulded columnar newel and moulded handrail. Parts of the original double crown-post roof survive in the attic, including paired rafters, collars, collar purlin and a single crown post and plate, all smoke-blackened with traces of ochre paint.

The east range has surviving timber framing including large-scantling beams, some chamfered, and joists; internally these are heavily corroded, indicating the former use of the ground floor as stables. Of particular interest is the square-framed former inner wall to the first-floor gallery, which has doorways to chambers and some remaining wattle and daub infill panels. The roof has clasped purlins, arched wind braces, queen-post trusses and old rafters, with a later ridge-piece supported by posts set on collars. The cellar under the north range is flint-walled with some chalk blocks and brick. The roof over the north range is largely under-boarded, but at the east end the original roof construction is visible, similar to that over the east range but of better quality.

In the west range, the former open hall retains much timber framing including close studding to the first-floor gallery wall (infill removed) and a good-quality queen-post central roof truss. The latter has clasped purlins, arched wind braces, coupled rafters and slightly cambered tie-beams with hollow chamfer mouldings supported on long arch braces and wall posts with similar mouldings, the latter terminating in pendants carved with three balls. On the ground floor are a brick Tudor arch and relieving arch to a former fireplace.

The earliest part of the present buildings is the cellar under the south range, which dates from around 1300; the building above, originally an open-hall structure occupying a burgage plot facing the town's high street, dates from the same period or slightly later and is probably the inn or tenement known as 'le Harte' referred to in a Court Roll of 1428-9. The inn was extended to the rear after 1531 (a date established by dendrochronology), with three ranges of buildings surrounding a courtyard and occupying the back-lands of the two burgage plots immediately to the west. These buildings contained around 20 guest chambers accessed from a jettied gallery with stabling below and a second open hall in the western range, the latter perhaps replacing the original hall which was floored over to create upper-level accommodation and a carriage entrance. Further buildings, now demolished, once enclosed a second courtyard to the rear.

In the 18th and early 19th centuries the White Hart was Henley's principal coaching inn. Part of the west range was demolished and rebuilt as stabling during this period. The Old White Hart, as it became known, remained in use as a public house into the 20th century. The street front was remodelled by the Henley architect A E Hobbs for Brakspear's brewery in the 1930s before the building eventually closed in 2008.