The Glue Pot Public House

The Glue Pot Public House

This public house on the corner of Emlyn Square and Reading Street was built in 1846–1847 by the Great Western Railway Company, originally as a shop. It was extended in the later 19th century, with minor internal alterations carried out in 1966 and the bar refitted in 1986–1987.

The building is constructed of coursed limestone rubble with limestone dressings and slate roofs. It is a three-storey corner building, roughly square on plan, with a canted corner to the junction of the two streets. A separate square-plan section adjoins the rear, formed by the roofing-over of the former yard.

The exterior displays Tudor Gothic styling. The canted corner bay houses the main public house entrance, comprising paired arched-headed, half-glazed doors with a rectangular overlight and a timber fascia carrying the pub name. This corner bay has a straight parapet rather than a gable. The other bays feature gables to the pitched roofs, each with a blind, keyed, oval oculus set in the apex. Projecting quoins and hood moulds frame the windows, and a continuous, deeply-moulded hood runs over the entire three-sided commercial shop front.

The west elevation to Emlyn Square presents a single wide bay. The ground floor contains a door for off sales to the left and a four-light window of columnar glazing to the right, with the pub name on a timber fascia above. The right return to Reading Street comprises two bays, with a similar two-light arcaded window to the left, pub name on a timber fascia above, and a tripartite, multi-paned sash window to the right. Other windows are tripartite, multi-paned timber sashes, decreasing in height towards the attic, with one to each bay on each floor. The rear elevation is irregular, with a single-storey extension featuring a pyramidal roof set in the re-entrant corner. The pub also occupies the westernmost bay of an adjacent two-storey former cottage on Reading Street, which has similar tripartite windows under a shallow-pitched slate roof.

Internally, the public bar is a single room with a matchboarded storm porch within the canted entrance bay and a 20th-century half-glazed inner door. The bar and bar back are replacements from the 1980s remodelling, as is the matchboarded booth seating. The former ladies' lounge to the rear is now the kitchen, which features a rail from the nearby railway works used as a ceiling beam, probably added during the 1966 remodelling. Beyond the kitchen, the ladies' lavatories occupy one bay of the adjacent cottage. The cellar sits approximately 45 centimetres below the ground floor level and is divided from an adjacent passage by a breezeblock wall. The painted rubble walling includes rough corbelling to carry the stair above.

A passage runs north from the doorway in the west elevation to the area latterly used for off sales. The exterior door appears modified to allow the upper glazed portion to hinge back for jug and bottle sales at a window thus created. The stair is tightly turned with plain stick balusters and a toadback handrail.

The upper floors provide domestic accommodation. Doors are four-panelled, and fireplaces with plain, mid-19th-century timber surrounds remain in the majority of rooms. The first floor has been slightly reordered, creating a wide landing from which a stair with turned newel and plain stick balusters rises to the second floor, with two slightly smaller rooms created to the east. The accommodation extends into the first floor of the adjacent cottage via a few steps to accommodate a change in floor level. The second floor rooms are similar to those on the first floor but retain their original layout. Two rooms have built-in full-height cupboards with panelled doors.