The Antelope Hotel

Hotel and restaurant, once a coaching inn. C16 possibly reusing C15 fabric; remodelled in the C18; refaced and roof raised in the early C19; refitted in 1939.

MATERIALS: dark-brown brick with red-brick dressings and terracotta tile roofs behind a flat parapet, with tall red-brick end stacks. There is some rubble stone construction to the carriage entrance and former warehouse, which is mainly of red and blue brick.

PLAN: built on an L-shaped plan with a long rear left wing, thought to have been a wholesale warehouse, and right-hand carriage entrance.

EXTERIOR: the principal elevation of the building is three storeys and five bays east to west, with a two-storey range containing a carriage entrance to the right. The near-symmetrical front has a central doorway with timber cinquefoil attached columns and bell capitals to a bracketed porch; above which is a canted first-floor oriel window with a panelled apron; and above again is a blind lunette to the second-floor. On the ground floor, to the right is an early-C20 shop front with pilasters, panelling beneath three windows, and a glazed door, with transom lights above; this was once the bar entrance. To the left are two sash windows with six panes to the top sashes and lettered leaded lights to the bottom, both under rubbed and gauged red-brick flat arches. There are also flat brick arches above the six-over-six-pane unhorned sash windows to the first floor, and three-over-six-pane sashes to second floor. A large late-C19 lantern is fixed to the right of the oriel window.

The right-hand, two-storey, two-window range has a segmental-arched carriage entrance beneath a C20 canted oriel window and a right-hand blocked segmental-arched window. At the rear is a half-hipped roof and late-C19 two-over-two-pane sash windows in exposed boxes.

The eastern rear range has a half-hipped roof and C19 two-over-two-pane sash windows. The former wholesale warehouse range at the rear to the west has a partial rubble-stone plinth, and shallow pilasters between cambered brick arches to six-over-six-pane sash windows.

INTERIOR: the ground floor and much of the interior was remodelled in the late C20, but C19 joinery (such as boarded doors and panelled shutters) and a C19 Jacobean-style stair with barley-twist bannisters and integral newel electric-lights is thought to survive. There is a fireplace with a Purbeck marble lintel to ground floor left, and another with shaped corbels and hollow-chamfered lintel. The ceiling beams are exposed. Additionally, the RCHME note some C16 details in the south-west rear wing.