The White Hart Public House

The White Hart Public House

Hotel. Built in the early 17th century. The building is constructed of Portland stone ashlar, with the front range rendered, and slate roofs throughout.

The structure comprises a symmetrical single-room-depth front range with a narrow wing to the left and a broader range to the right, which incorporates the former No. 20 Lower Bond Street. Between the rear ranges stands a gabled early stair turret. Later low ranges have been added to the left (south) and across the rear, enclosing a small courtyard.

Exterior

The building stands at two storeys with attics. The front elevation facing St Nicholas Street was completely refenestrated in the mid-19th century with plain sashes. Three flat-roofed dormers sit above broad canted two-storey bays with moulded cornices at each level. At first floor is a central sash positioned above a projecting square porch with glazed doors and cheeks in square pilasters and responds. A 20th-century door stands beyond the bay at each end, beneath the continuation of the bay cornices. Dentils appear on the cornices to the porch and left half of the front only. A small plinth, returned to the gable ends, supports a plain coped parapet set between scrolled kneelers to saddle-back coped gables with square ashlar stacks at either end, topped with cappings bearing very small dentils.

The right gable is plain but features a large three-panel door in pilasters with entablature. The front to Lower Bond Street continues with a section rebuilt in the late 19th century, "stitched in" at the right-hand end to the earlier ashlar coped gable. The centre section displays a good two-light sash raking dormer in a tiled roof above an 8:12:8-pane oriel, with three plain sashes in flush surrounds at ground floor. The front gable, in the same plane as the remainder, has a two-light hollow-chamfer moulded stone casement with label above a 4:12:4-pane sash, also with label course. Ground floor contains two plain sashes. The return gable has a glazed door in pilaster surround. This gable has a small terminal stack and simple coping; the other has saddle-back coping. The south side shows a rubble gable with a blocked attic light in a flush chamfered surround and, at first floor, a two-light recessed chamfer casement with label. Beyond lies the lower gabled wing, with coping and kneelers, and a large blocked three-light casement with label. The rear stair turret is in good ashlar with a coped gable and kneelers. Sundry additions exist at low level.

Interior

The ground floor has been substantially modified. On the inner wall of the right range is a former two-light window in a stone wall with hollow-chamfer mullions. The front room to the left has a wide fireplace with a flat four-centred stone lintel, the mouldings partly broken off. A wide spiral stone staircase in a half-cylindrical well has treads roughly shaped to the soffits and carried to corbels on the outer wall. It continues through the upper storey in simplified form, with the central stone newel finishing in a slightly rounded capping and fluted sides.

The upper room to the right features fine bolection-mould panelling and a 19th-century fire surround with reeding and paterae. The ceiling, which continues across the whole of the front range at this level though interrupted by later partitions, displays richly moulded plasterwork in a series of diamonds with fleur-de-lys enrichment. The roof appears to have been replaced in the 19th century and was not fully inspected. The attics are not in use and the floor structure there is in poor condition.

At the time of survey, the building stood surrounded by dereliction or mid-20th-century development. It represents one of the more substantial early buildings of the town.