New Inn House And Railings

NEW INN HOUSE AND RAILINGS

Abbey guest house, later an inn and now a private dwelling, located on Wotton Road in Kingswood. The building dates to circa 1495, with tree-ring evidence for an extension circa 1519, and was remodelled in the late 17th or early 18th century. It is thought to have been a guest house of the Cistercian Abbey of Kingswood, founded in 1139, making it a very rare example of a virtually intact monastic guest house.

The structure is built of stone rubble with stone dressings and a roughcast rendered front. The roof is of clay plain tile with gable ends and a hipped corner. The external walls feature rendered stone gable-end and rear lateral stacks; the north end stack is corbelled out with diagonally-set brick shafts.

The original 1495 guest house was L-shaped in plan. The 3-bay roof south range comprised a cross-passage and hall with a chamber above open to the roof, both heated from fireplaces in a lateral stack at the back, and a carriageway in the third bay at the south end with a loft above. The 5-bay roof north range comprised a parlour at the west end with a chamber above and an attic chamber above that, and a service room to the east with a chamber open to the roof and a smoke-bay at the east end. In 1519, a 1-room plan addition with a chamber was built in the angle at the rear. In the late 17th or early 18th century, the guest house was remodelled and refenestrated at the front.

The exterior presents two storeys with an asymmetrical 5-window west front. The windows are 12-pane sashes in exposed cases with some thick glazing bars. A doorway to the left of centre has a fielded 6-panel door with top panels glazed. A carriageway to the right accommodates 20th-century garage doors. The left (north) return has a large projecting corbelled stack with set-offs and a moulded stone 2-light ground floor window with arched lights and hoodmould. A rendered wing to the left has 20th-century fenestration. The rear has 20th-century windows. Iron area railings with slightly splayed rounded finials stand in front of the building.

The interior retains a hall and parlour with moulded axial beams and chamfered 4-centred arch stone fireplaces. Similar but smaller fireplaces exist in the chambers above. The north wing has chamfered cross-beams on the ground and first floors with hollow-step stops. 17th-century panelling survives. Late 17th or early 18th-century joinery includes bolection moulded and fielded 2-panel doors, plank doors with strap hinges, and a staircase with panelled newels, moulded handrail, and missing balusters. A fragment of a moulded plaster ceiling and painted chevrons on joist soffits remain in the chamber over the hall. A putative garderobe on the north side has been removed.

The roof comprises 5 bays to the north range and 3 bays to the south range with tie-beam and collar trusses, two tiers of threaded chamfered purlins with diagonal stops, curved wind-braces, a diagonally-set ridgepiece, and intact common-rafter couples. The east bay of the north range has a smoke-blackened smoke-bay separated from the central bays by a closed truss, though smoke escaped into the central bay. The west bay is also separated by a closed-truss and includes a floor for a solar. The 1519 addition in the rear angle has a clasped-purlin roof.