Queen'S Armes Hotel

The Queen's Armes Hotel, formerly a coaching inn and hostelry, dates largely to the early 16th century, with a late 18th-century re-facing and 20th-century internal alterations. It is constructed of rubble stone walls, now rendered, with an asbestos slate roof and stone gable coping at the east end. There are three rendered stacks visible on the ridge at each gable end, and an inserted stack to the left of the centre. A 16th-century rear wall stack serves the ground and first-floor halls. The original plan comprised a kitchen, buttery, and pantry, a former screens passage, a hall, a parlour, and rooms above.

The north elevation has two storeys and seven windows. The ground floor has 20th-century wooden casements with glazing bars, and one large 20th-century window to the right. The first floor has two sliding sash windows and vertical sash windows. The early 16th-century doorway, now largely obscured, features moulded stone jambs of lias with a four-centred head within a square frame. The left spandrel bears the initials "TC" (for Thomas Chard, the last Abbot of Forde), and the right spandrel bears a "D." The present front door, a 20th-century addition, is a six-panel door with four glazed panels, positioned to the right. A tablet above the doorway commemorates that “King Charles II slept here September 22-23, 1651,” and records its erection on March 31, 1902.

The interior retains several notable features. Fireplaces include a blocked hall fireplace, a parlour fireplace with stone jambs and a Tudor-arched head, and a stone fireplace on the first-floor hall, all dating to the 16th century. Extensive plank-and-muntin partitioning is present in the kitchen, hall, parlour and upper rooms, made of oak with straight chamfers. Partitions in the parlour are decorated with a stencilled flower pattern. Heavily moulded ceiling beams create compartments in the hall, parlour, and a solar bedroom. The parlour beams feature a sunk oak leaf pattern, and the solar has 16 small ceiled compartments. Buttery and pantry doorways remain in their original locations. The kitchen has mortices in the plank-and-muntin partitioning for a missing stair over the back door. A rebated and chamfered back door has stone jambs. A blocked stone doorway in the parlour indicates the original location of a staircase from the ground floor. The roof has an arch-braced collar-beam structure with original wattle and plaster partitions.