White Hart Hotel

The White Hart Hotel dates to the late 16th/early 17th century, with substantial rebuilding and enlargement in the early 19th century, and a later 19th-century applied decorative timber-frame facade. The original core is of plastered rubble and cob with a concrete tile roof. There is an early 19th-century brick outshut to the rear, and a rear service block of exposed rubble with a slate roof.

Originally a three-room-and-through-passage house facing south, only the original inner room survives, sharing a roofline with the adjacent Brook Villa. The hall, passage, and service room were rebuilt in the early 19th century, along with a contemporary stair block behind the hall and a two-storey brick rear porch to the passage, built wide enough to accommodate a carriageway. A rear service wing extends at right angles behind the service room. Rear lateral stacks are present to the hall and inner rooms, with a now-disused end stack to the service end room. The rebuilt section projects forwards and is higher than the original part.

The main (rebuilt) section has a nearly symmetrical 3-window front, featuring 19th-century 16-pane sashes, with a horned 20-pane sash with a narrow 4-pane side sash on the ground floor to the left. The wide doorway, slightly right of centre, contains a 6-panel door set within a massive door frame constructed partly from reused 17th-century timbers. The first floor features applied Tudor-style timber framing. The recessed inner room to the left has a 20th-century glass-roofed porch to a secondary doorway and a first-floor tripartite sash with a central 12-pane sash. The rear passage porch has a brick segmental arch to the carriageway, surmounted by a carved sandstone Norman-style head.

Internally, much of the 19th-century joinery has been preserved. An oak plank-and-muntin screen, dating to the late 16th/early 17th century, separates the older inner room from the hall. The screen has muntins chamfered on the hall side only, with run-out stops. The inner room has a plain chamfered crossbeam and a rubble fireplace with a soffit-chamfered and step-stopped oak lintel. The hall features a large late 16th/early 17th century rubble fireplace with granite jambs and a plain oak lintel. The roof over the inner room is not accessible, but the bases of the principals suggest a probably 17th-century A-frame truss. The roof of the main block has not been inspected.