The Green Dragon Public House

The Green Dragon Public House

This public house, possibly originally a church house, stands on Church Road in Stoke Fleming. Built in the early to late 17th century, it was extended in the late 18th or early 19th century and then remodelled and extended again in the mid 19th century. The building is constructed of rendered local stone rubble with a slate roof, bitumen-coated over the right-hand end and reclad in asbestos slates over the left-hand end. Gable end and axial stacks survive, heightened in brick in the late 19th century, with the lower right-hand end stack projecting.

The original plan probably comprised three rooms with a through or cross-passage, facing south with the lower end to the right (east). The hall contains an axial stack at its lower right-hand end and a stair turret, now with stairs removed, projecting at the back. The former inner room at the left end has been knocked through with the hall to form one large room used as the bar. The lower right-hand end was converted into a small two-room cottage with a central entrance in the mid 19th century. A one-room wing behind the lower end probably dates from the late 18th century, while another one-room wing in the angle to the left likely dates from the mid 19th century conversion period. Single-storey outshuts behind the higher end and a small one-room wing at the front of the hall are 20th-century additions.

The house is two storeys with an asymmetrical south front of four windows. A small projecting wing stands centrally with two windows on either side. To the right are two 12-pane sashes in a symmetrical arrangement flanking a central doorway, dating from the mid 19th century, though the first-floor sashes were replaced in the 20th century with facsimiles. A glazed and panelled door with a rectangular overlight dates from the late 19th or early 20th century. To the left of the front wing is a two-window range of 20th-century casements with a 20th-century central door. The wing displays a blocked doorway in its front gable end. A Sun Fire Insurance plaque survives at the front. At the back are two-storey wings, one gable-ended and one with a hipped roof, behind the lower left-hand end, and a single-storey 20th-century outshut to the right behind the higher end.

Internally, the putative hall in the lower right-hand end of the bar retains a large open fireplace with a chamfered timber lintel with ogee stops, corbelled out on the left side on three corbel stones with rounded chamfered ends. A large stone rubble vaulted oven appears original within the right-hand side of the fireplace. The ceiling contains two chamfered cross-beams with ogee stops, with joists also chamfered. At the higher left end is a small fireplace with an unchamfered timber lintel, probably heating the former inner room before the partition was removed. The lower end room shows no visible early features. First-floor joinery dates from the 19th and 20th centuries. The roof structure consists of straight principal rafters with thin lapped and pegged collars.