Gubshill Manor Inn

Gubshill Manor Inn

Inn, formerly a manor house. Parts are reputedly from 1438, with a local tradition that Queen Margaret slept here at the time of the Battle of Tewkesbury in 1471. The building is mainly 16th and 17th century, with major restoration undertaken in 1707.

The structure features braced square panel timber-framing with rendered or painted brick panels, some painted brick underbuilding, and a tile roof. The building is what remains of a formerly more extensive manor house. A substantial 17th-century stone block originally stood to the right of the existing structure. The current arrangement forms a 3-gabled unit. The section to the left has a wide gable rising to a lofty transverse roof with rear eaves stack. The central unit contains the principal fireplace with a stack to the left eaves and forms a deep wing with a lower gable in the same front plane. A third gabled wing, set back from the front, has a cat-slide roof to the right. The main staircase is positioned in the front of this end unit.

The exterior is 2 storeys and attics with 2 and 3-light casements throughout. The set-back gable features a small plain oculus and a plank entrance door to the right. The return front to the north has a 3-light gabled dormer and a recessed window within the roof slope at first-floor level. Later work, built under a swept-down roof, includes an inset loggia to the west. The back wall to the west is twin-gabled with various casements and continuous brick underbuild. At low level a fragment of stone walling survives from the demolished section of the house. The south gable end is rendered in painted brick with applied timbering.

The interior contains a principal 17th-century staircase in the entrance lobby, combining dogleg and open well forms with large square capped newels and a broad moulded handrail on replacement turned balusters. The ground-floor room of principal interest is located in the middle unit. In two sections, it contains a rebuilt bressumer fireplace in a thick stone wall. This fireplace incorporates a series of stone cusped panel-heads approximately 250 millimetres deep and 3.5 metres long, built in above mantel level, plus a large inset stone niche with head to the right, possibly from the Abbey church. This room and the one adjoining to the west both have a longitudinal brattished and moulded beam featuring a series of mortices alternating with stopped mouldings without mortice, arranged as for a compartmental ceiling. In the smaller room to the west at a lower level, this beam and moulding is carried round as a cornice. The first-floor restaurant has a framed front wall with curved tension bracing and a 4-light casement with some ovolo-moulded members. The central section, descended 2 steps with a small single light, has chamfered beams. Beyond this, through an opened timber partition, the space contains a transverse chamfered beam carried on a large corner post corresponding with the central gable above, and a small corner fireplace. The attics are not presently in use and the roof spaces were not fully inspected, but in the main south section the roof structure is propped collar with a single purlin and no visible wind bracing.

The history of the Manor of Gubshill is documented in the Victoria County History, which records that by circa 1835 the house was split into two dwellings and later into tenements. By 1931 it had become a hotel. Old photographs show a gabled stone manor house with a prominent date of 1665. Historical records indicate that the second of the two units was not, as sometimes stated, demolished in 1835, but clearly survived until late in the 19th century.