Bridge Inn

Bridge Inn

A public house and inn of early 18th-century date, possibly with earlier origins. It comprises a lower right-hand wing and rear brewery and malt-house of late 18th or early 19th-century date.

The earliest part of the building is constructed of cob and stone. The right-hand wing is brick below with tile hanging above under a hipped roof. The rear wing and kiln are a mixture of cob, stone and brick. Parts of the building are slate-hung. The walls are principally painted pink apart from some of the slate hanging. The roofs are slated except for the left-hand outshut, which has pantiles, and the rear wing, which has pantiles and sheeting. The building has brick ridge stacks and cast-iron rainwater goods. The interior joinery includes 18th and 19th-century ledged plank doors, panelling, shutters and fitted settles to the public areas.

The pub occupies a partly two-storey, four-bay main range. The left bay is residential, with the two public rooms and a corridor to the right. The second room, a parlour with servery hatch to the Snug, is within an outshut with steps down to a cellar in a brick outshut. At the right (south) corner of the main range, set forward to the road edge, is a two-storey square-plan addition with a public room (the Tap Room) at ground floor. To the rear of the main range is a two-storey brewery and malthouse range on a north-south orientation, containing a kiln room and a large public room with servery and hop-drying loft to the first floor.

The ground floor of the painted road front on Bridge Street has three windows arranged around two doors. Four windows light the first floor. Window openings to the left bay are casements; those to the centre and right are sashes without horns. The right-hand three-panelled door has a reeded case. An outshut with wide cart doors facing the road is attached to the left. Two stacks rise to the roof—one to the ridge centre and one to the end gable—and a cast-iron hanging sign is fixed to the slates over the central bay. The projecting Tap Room addition has a storey band, a slate-hung first floor and an eaves cornice. Its road elevation features a full-height central canted bay with horned sashes to both storeys. A large brick stack stands between the two ranges. On the return flank facing the bridge are offset three-light sashes to ground and first-floor windows, and a small casement to the ground-floor right. To the rear, steps lead to the pub entrance beside the parlour outshut, which has a casement and a tall brick stack. Two casements light the gable end wall behind. The cellar outshut has a wide door below the slate-hung side of the brewery range, with a horned sash at first-floor level. Further right, the brewery range is angled to the north and is of double height with two attic windows and former taking-in openings at first-floor level to the centre and right. At ground-floor level is a slim flat-roofed extension with entrance into the public room. Most of the brewery roof is of lower ridge height than the bays attached to the main range.

The front and rear entrances both open into a panelled corridor with horizontal boarding connecting the Snug, Parlour and Tap Room. The small left-hand lounge, the Snug, has a high-level salt cupboard set in the back wall and two high-back curved settles, glazed above, defining one wall of the corridor. A stone inglenook with oak bressumer is in the west wall. A door to the kiln room has a formal moulded case with the side panel of a settle fixed to the right architrave and the end of the moulded ceiling beam set above its upper right corner. The panelled hatch to the parlour has a fitted counter with cask shelf below on the parlour side, and three bottle openers are fixed to the wall, one for old marble stopper bottles. The Parlour has a corner cast-iron fireplace with shelving above, and to its right is a window seat below a sash with early timber plank shutters. A curved settle is set to the right of the window against the corridor wall, and a push bell stands by the parlour door in the corridor. The Tap Room at the front has fixed seating, panelled behind, and two tiers of cupboards to the left of a brick fireplace with chimneypiece. The fanlight above the door has white painted cement lettering advertising "Kennaways Adore Scotland's Best Whisky".

Stone steps descend from the Parlour to the brick beer cellar, which has a wide door to the yard and a door in the opposite wall to the malthouse kiln. The brick kiln furnace provided hot air for malting operations. It is square on plan with a lime-washed shaft that extends out to form arches to the top of the kiln room walls. The furnace mouth faces north with six fire bars set back from the front and an iron plate to the top of the furnace front. A blocked mouth faces east and a ventilator opens to the south. The kiln room walls are stone (at the rear of the main range) and brick. The wall to the cellar is timber framed with brick infill and has exposed stone footings to the north corner. Cobblestones are laid on the floor. A ledged plank door opens into the former brewery to the rear, now a large rectangular public room principally accessed from the car park. The malting floor has been removed and there is a mid-20th-century brick fireplace with a modern stove. One hop-shoot survives in the room. The lime-plastered rubble walls are of double thickness to around two metres in height with regularly spaced recesses below under timber lintels. One recess has been altered to a window with shutters. The ledges above support the struts and posts of the exposed timber structure to the hop-drying floor above, with some later brick reinforcement. Timber-shuttered openings are spaced across the walls at upper level except to the south wall, where a timber gallery constructed of hand-sawn timbers stands above a 1960s servery. The roof is constructed of pegged king-post trusses with slender struts.