North Country Inn

North Country Inn is a house, now a public house, dating from the 17th century with early 18th-century refurbishment and late 20th-century restoration. It is constructed of painted brick with a slate roof, half-hipped at the ends and featuring pierced ridge tiles. A left-end stack has an old brick shaft, and the left end has pierced barge-boards.

The house follows a 17th-century town house plan, a variation on the gallery and back block arrangement, incorporating two galleries running from front to rear across a central courtyard. A side passage is located to the right. The building is three storeys high and symmetrical, with three bays on the front. The main entrance is a two-leaf panelled door on the right, with a chamfered inner door frame likely dating to the 20th century. Ground-floor windows are two 16-pane sashes. First-floor windows consist of three taller 12-pane sashes with moulded architraves. The two outer second-floor windows are 16-pane sashes with a blind recess in the centre.

The interior retains many historic features. A section of the original plank and muntin side-passage screen survives to the rear of the courtyard, displaying chamfered muntins with scroll stops. The right-hand gallery (above the side passage) is supported by a beam with an ovolo-moulded scroll-stopped detail. A large fireplace on the left-hand wall provides heating for a rear ground-floor room. A staircase rises from within the courtyard, which has now been roofed over, against the rear wall of the front cell. A first-floor front room retains a fireplace (with a replaced lintel) on the right-hand wall and 17th-century panelling. A good plaster ceiling from around 1700 is present, adorned with a central oval and quarter circles decorated with scallop shells. Original 17th-century door frames are visible from the front room to the galleries.

Evidence suggests the galleries were originally used concurrently. This is supported by a plank-and-muntin screen forming the first-floor courtyard partition of the rear room, which although altered in the centre, appears to be in its original position and retains two original doorways from the galleries. A rear first-floor room preserves a good 17th-century fireplace with an ovolo-moulded lintel, and stones laid in a herringbone pattern in the fireback. The roof has not been inspected but is likely to be of interest.

The building represents an important example of a 17th-century town house plan and possesses group value as a significant local landmark.