Llandoger Trow Public House

The Llandoger Trow Public House comprises three adjoining houses on King Street, now converted into one public house and restaurant. Built around 1665 with partial refenestration in the 18th century, it represents the finest group of 17th-century timber-framed buildings in Bristol.

The building is a timber box frame construction with stone party walls, brick lateral stacks, and a pantile roof. It rises three storeys with an attic and basement, spanning five bays. The three gabled fronts face at right angles to the road, each featuring a central right-hand stairwell positioned between two lateral stacks that open into a central lobby serving front and rear rooms.

The street elevation displays a fine range of three equal gables, jetted above the ground and first floors with a slate pent covering the ground floor. The gables feature moulded fascia boards and boxed eaves. The ground floors of the outer houses are articulated by Jacobean Ionic pilasters with lozenges, set beneath moulded brackets, with left-hand doors.

Number 3 has a framed 16-panel door and two 8-over-8 pane sashes above a left-hand segmental-arched basement hatch. Number 4 has an 18th-century shop front with a central 20th-century door and deep bays either side containing paired 12-over-12 pane sashes to the right and two 24-pane windows to the left. Number 5 has a framed scratch-moulded 16-panel door and two pairs of plate-glass sashes above brick nogging.

The upper floors display exposed ovolo-moulded close studding beneath continuous full-width fenestration, now blocked. Between 2-storey canted oriels containing Ipswich windows serve Number 3 and the second floors of Numbers 4 and 5, which have 12-over-12 pane sashes to the first floor. The attic features 3-light mullion and transom windows to Numbers 3 and 4, and an 8-over-8 pane sash to Number 5.

The right return is a one-window range with 17th-century mullion and transom casements and two lateral stacks set in small gables. The rear gables are each one-window ranges with late 19th-century sashes. Number 5 has a 2-storey oriel beneath a second-floor pent roof. Late 20th-century kitchen blocks are attached to the rear.

The interior retains exceptional 17th-century plaster ceilings with cyma-moulded beams featuring bar stopped chamfers. Central right-hand framed dogleg stairs with thick turned balusters and square newels with ball finials open into central first-floor lobbies. Ground and first floors are divided into narrow compartments by moulded beams decorated with plaster quatrefoil patterns featuring Adam and Eve-style figures, pomegranates, and fleurs de lys. The most ornate plasterwork is found in the first-floor former Great Chambers to the front.

The ground floor of Number 4 has a narrow front compartment representing a former shop. Number 4 has scratch-moulded first-floor panelling with incised decoration dating from the late 17th century. The ground-floor front room to Number 3 is fully panelled with bolection moulding and is now linked to Number 4. A 20th-century kitchen occupies the rear of Number 3.

The rear room of Number 4 contains a 17th-century carved North German overmantel depicting the Nativity and a shell-hood corner cupboard to the left. Number 5 has a rear door with stopped moulded frame and panelled doors from the stairwell. The stairwell is restored on the ground floor and features an ovolo-moulded cross window and casements with turn buckles. First-floor 17th-century stone fire surrounds to Numbers 3 and 5 have Tudor arches and stopped mouldings.

This building was originally part of a range of five houses with shops on the ground floor, prefiguring later terrace forms. Two houses from this range were lost during the Second World War. The structure retains its original plan forms and represents a rare surviving example of this housing type. Similar plasterwork can be found at Number 33 on the same street.