The Station public house, formerly The Stoneleigh Hotel

This building is an 'improved' public house built between 1934 and 1935 to designs by A E Sewell for the brewery of Truman, Hanbury, Buxton & Co. Ltd. It represents a fine example of the neo-Tudor style (sometimes called 'Brewer's Tudor') that was popular for inter-war public houses.

Construction and Materials

The building is constructed of narrow red bricks laid in English bond, with painted Hornton stone dressings. Timber-framed elements are traditionally constructed in pegged English oak. Windows are steel-framed casements with lozenge-shaped leaded lights, set in stone or timber mullioned frames. The roof is covered in clay tiles.

Layout and Setting

The building is detached and two storeys high with attic rooms and a cellar. It stands on a corner plot with a roughly square plan, the principal north elevation facing the Broadway and the secondary east elevation facing Kenilworth Road. Car parks lie to the south and west, with an enclosed garden in the south-west corner. The site slopes downward to the east, so this side of the pub is slightly elevated above street level. A raised path runs round the north-east corner of the building, surrounded by a snecked rubble retaining wall.

The original public entrances all remain. The entrances currently in use are in the north front (the original entrance to the saloon lounge) and at the corner of the north and east elevations (a later pair of door-openings inserted into a range of windows). The entrance to the function hall is at the rear of the building.

Internally, the ground floor has a series of interconnecting spaces wrapping around the four sides of the central kitchen and staff stair. The first floor is occupied by the social hall complex to the west, a large kitchen to the south, and the remainder of the space (along with the attic level) is given over to staff accommodation.

Exterior Architecture

The design is in an elaborate neo-Tudor style, with mullion and transom windows, half-timbered gables, first-floor timber framing, imposing brick chimneystacks, and small half-hipped dormer windows projecting from the steeply pitched tiled roof. The design also shows the influence of the Arts and Crafts style, notably in the varied, informal roof lines and the integration of numerous hand-crafted details.

North Façade

The main façade to the north is the most architecturally elaborate, presenting an irregular, mixed height composition formed around a central jettied gable. The gable has carved bargeboards and three panels of pargetted decoration featuring stylised vines and foliage. There is a first-floor shallow oriel window with a small stained glass heraldic crest in the centre. To the right of this window is the original bracket for the pub's sign, though the sign itself has been removed. The jetty is supported at either side by two pairs of scrolled brackets with comedic gargoyle head stops, featuring carved grinning and laughing figures. Beneath the jetty is a bay window, and to the left of this is the pub's main entrance, which originally led directly into the saloon lounge. The entrance has a Tudor arch, set beneath a series of decorative sculpted stone relief panels, featuring 16th-century style depictions of a wheat sheaf, a coat of arms, a Tudor rose and stylised foliage.

To the far right of the main façade is a smaller gabled section which projects from the main line of the building. This originally served as a separate off sales shop, or off licence, a function reflected in its design, which recalls that of a shopfront. It is formed of a recessed doorway flanked by multi-paned showcase windows, with recently added chequer tile-work to the entranceway. The timber door and window frames along with the gable bargeboards all feature carved vine and foliage decoration. The gable above picks up on some of the patterns seen in the larger central gable, notably further pargetted vine and foliage decorative work between the timber studs.

The windows in the upper portion of the Broadway frontage all retain their original leaded glazing. The survival of original glazing on the ground floor is good but slightly patchier, with several windows having had new glazing inserted.

East Façade

The corner portion of the pub's north elevation, facing the junction with Kenilworth Road, has a single-storey brick projection. Originally, its canted corner was filled with a continuous band of mullion and transom windows, but it now contains two doorways either side of a retained central window. The building's east façade, facing Kenilworth Road, is the shortest of the building's elevations, but the level of detail is on a par with the Broadway frontage. At the southern end is a gabled bay with jetties at both first- and second-floor levels, sharing many details with the gables on the pub's north side, notably vine motif pargetting, carved bargeboards, and two pairs of brackets with carved gargoyle head stops. There is an oriel window on ground and first floors, beneath each jetty. Just to the left of the first-floor windows is the original wrought iron sign bracket, now without its signboard.

South and West Façades

The pub's south and west elevations are less elaborate but nevertheless retain much of their original, if more modest, detailing. The west elevation shows evidence of some of the minor alterations executed in 1938, and includes a screen wall which encloses a small yard in front of the building. To the south a tall gable-ended brick bay with a Tudor-arched opening marks the entrance to the social hall complex.

Interior

Ground Floor

The ground floor interior of the building has been substantially altered from its original form and layout. The public saloon, saloon, saloon lounge and billiard room now form a single space. However, a sense of where the former room divisions would have been located can be noted from the ceiling breaks, and the location of the off-sales area is still readable as a separate space. Part of the original plaster cornice of the former billiard room survives and some original panelling, which has been painted over, survives in the former public saloon.

First Floor: Social Hall Complex

The first-floor social hall, along with its attendant smoking room (now bar area), reception halls and staircase all survive largely intact. This section of the building was always intended to be completely separate from the main bar rooms, and is entered to the south of the building from the car park, implying that Truman's anticipated an affluent class of custom, likely to arrive by car, to attend such events.

The ground-floor entrance hall is accessed via an open lobby with a pair of four-centred arched doorways. The hall forms an impressive double-height space with a substantial fireplace on its west side, with a Truman's eagle emblem within a roundel set into the overmantel. Above this is a band of fielded panels with linenfold motifs. The fireplace is topped by a painted plaster relief medallion featuring a portcullis, framed by a stylised foliage border and depictions of the national flowers of England (a rose), Wales (daffodil) and Scotland (thistle). The room has picture-rail height panelling throughout and a set of double doors set into the west wall, giving access to the gardens. Above the panelling the walls are painted plaster but have an underlying treatment which gives them a hammered effect. A dogleg staircase with fielded panelling in the stair-well leads to the first-floor areas.

The first-floor reception hall continues the fielded, picture-rail height panelling of the entrance hall and the stairway. These spaces are lit by a series of leaded stained-glass windows featuring detailed, and apparently authentic, heraldic crests. The principal room on the first floor is the social hall, designed to accommodate 150 guests. It is a large rectangular space, open to the collar of the double arch-braced trusses. The braces springing from brackets are adorned with intricate gilded head stops, carved with humorous faces. The rafters are exposed and there is ogee bracing (imitating wind bracing). The painted plaster above the panelling and between the timbers of the roof has a hammered effect. At the north end is a large fireplace with a broad four-centred arch and carved spandrels. An oak surround and overmantel, with a band of geometric patterning above the arch, is set beneath a large plaster relief depiction of a pair of gilded lions flanking an oak tree. There is further decorative plaster-work at the south end of the room.

An adjoining servery and chair store (now a store) retains its panelling, original folding oak screen, and what appears to be an original 1930s oak-clad refrigerator.

On the west side of the hall is a rectangular recess with raised dais, lit by leaded windows with coloured glass. This is part of Sewell's extension of 1938 and connects with the former smoking room, now bar, on the west side of the social hall. The bar has the original panelled bar counter, behind which is a bar back carved with foliage and bunches of grapes. This is set between oak shelving for glasses and a panelled back board, with an entrance to a 'wash up' compartment (still in its original use) off-set to the right. The room has some original fixed benching with decorative plasterwork above, and stained-glass windows in the west wall, inset with heraldic crests. The timber cornice seems to be original, though the canopy (or pot shelf) set above the bar counter is a later addition.

The large first floor kitchen has modern fittings. The dumb waiters, which connect with what is now the downstairs kitchen (formerly the 'servery'), remain in their original position, although are modern replacements.

Ancillary Structures and Garden

A E Sewell's plans show the enclosed rear garden in some detail. It had a double flight of steps at its north end, a flight of stairs to the east, a square enclosure at its centre, and an octagonal pavilion at its south-east corner, reached by stairs. It also had low walls just inside part of its perimeter, and further to the south, possibly enclosing planting beds. The east stairs remain, as do the double stairs with integrated planting beds to the north, albeit with some replaced copings. Otherwise the garden appears modernised with close-board fencing. It is possible however that the modern fence sits inside some of the original hard landscaping, screening it from view.

The larger car park to the rear of the building retains a single garage to the far south of the plot. This simple brick-built structure with a parapeted roof and timber double doors is original to the site but is not of special interest.