The Widdicombe Arms

ST 47 SE WRAXALL CLEVEDON ROAD (south-west side)

3/184 The Widdicombe Arms (formerly listed as The Battleaxes Inn 27.4.73

G.V II

Village temperance inn, estate club house and caretaker's house, now a public house with integral restaurant and accommodation. Designed 1880-1881, dated 1882, by William Butterfield for Anthony Gibbs of Tyntesfield. Coursed rubble with freestone dressings and irregular quoins; mock timber framing to some of the first floor; plain tiled roofs; ashlar and rubble stacks. An irregular and asymmetrical group with the inn at the south-east and the former club hall and former caretaker's house to the north-west. The inn is 2 storeys with a central section of 2 coped gables with finials; the left gable has a chequer-board pattern; single light casement and cross windows on ground floor; 2- and 5-lights on first floor. The right window has a plain architrave and is surmounted by a flat gable with pinnacles; downpipe with a decorative Gothic style hopper and the letter G (Gibbs); off-centre gabled projecting porch with clasping buttresses, panelled doors in a hollow-chamfered, pointed surround under a hoodmould. To the left of the centre is a 2-bay section of irregular heights: at the right is a 2-light casement window with shouldered heads, and a timber-framed first floor; at the left is a projecting, single-storey, gabled wing with 2-light casement windows. To the right of the centre is a further irregular 2-bay section with a blocked door to the left and a C20 bow- fronted extension to the right; timber-framed first floor with a gabled dormer on corbels. The C20 extension joins the inn to the former club hall, through a porch with a hipped roof. The hall is of a single storey, 5 bays; timber-framed on a rubble base; single light casement windows; the centre projects as a 1:2:1 light canted stone bay, the windows have ashlar surrounds and shouldered heads, half pyramidal roof with a cast-iron finial. The north-west gable end is stone and has a 2-light Geometrical style window. Set back at the right is a single storey entrance wing; plank door in an ashlar surround with a cusped head and flanking buttress. Behind this - facing onto the Grove - is the former caretaker's house: 2 storeys, a flat roof concealed behind a moulded cornice, moulded string course; 2 bays, 2- and 3-light casement windows with, chamfered mullions and under relieving arches on the ground floor; central plank door in a segmental headed surround and under a triangular dripmould. The rear elevations are also quite irregular and asymmetrical with bows, bays and turrets on 3 floors. The interior of the inn is altered butthe former hall has a timbered roof (P. Thompson, William Butterfield, 1971).

Listing NGR: ST4952971531