The White Hart Public House And Attached Garage (Part Of Number 33)

No 31 (The White Hart Public House) and attached garage (part of No 33), Newland Street, Eynsham

A 14th-century hall house, now a public house with attached garage, that was remodelled in the early 17th century with further alterations in the mid 18th and 20th centuries. The building is cruck-framed and constructed of coursed limestone rubble, with a roughcast front to the garage on the right. The roof is gabled stone slate, with corrugated iron covering to the rear right. There are rear lateral and left end stacks of stone finished in brick, and a 19th-century brick front lateral stack.

The building is one storey and attic in height, with a four-window range. A 19th-century bracketed hood sits over a six-panelled door. Concrete lintels span the 20th-century casement windows. A concrete lintel runs above a blocked medieval service doorway to the right, which retains a plain chamfer with broach stop to one stone ashlar door jamb. Timber lintels sit above the 20th-century garage doors in the bay to the right. Early 20th-century gabled half-dormers pierce the roof. A mid 18th-century wing extends to the rear, one storey and attic in height, with a two-window range of limestone rubble and a gabled stone slate roof.

The interior preserves a remarkable medieval structure. Originally a four-bay hall house with a raised-cruck roof, the two central trusses are heavily smoke-blackened. The central truss has an arch-braced collar with windbraces, and the right-hand truss retains its collar and arch braces, though the other trusses are now missing these features. Some windbraces survive throughout. The through-purlins were replaced and turned around in the 17th century, and the smoke-blackened rafters in the central bays were reset. The morticed beam of the original screens partition survives to the right of the service doorway, which has an arched chamfered lintel above. Early 17th-century insertions include floors and stacks, probably introduced first at the solar end to the left. A chamfered beam with rolled and run-out stop runs to the left; a chamfered beam and chamfered bressummer span an open fireplace with inglenook seats to the centre. Winder stairs run to the rear, and a 17th-century trap door provides access to the attic.

The building is probably the "aula" mentioned in the Eynsham Abbey cartulary of 1366. It was divided into two dwellings in the 1750s and was licensed as the "Haunch of Venison" from 1785. The manorial courts met here in the 19th century.