Drewe Arms Public House

The Drewe Arms is a public house with private accommodation, likely dating back to the 17th century, although it may have origins in the 16th century. A significant modernisation occurred in the late 19th century. The building is constructed with plastered cob on stone rubble footings, with stone rubble stacks; one original granite ashlar chimneyshaft and later brick tops. It has a thatched roof with corrugated iron and slate additions.

The building’s layout is T-shaped, featuring a three-room plan facing south onto the village square. The eastern end houses a kitchen with a projecting gable-end stack. The central room, possibly a former hall, has an axial stack backing onto the kitchen, and the western end contains a bar with a gable-end stack. A stair block projects at a right angle to the rear of the central room. It is believed that the house originally had a 3-room-and-through-passage plan, which has been modified over time with the kitchen enlarged to include the passage, and the original passage doorways blocked. The current arrangement reflects a comprehensive, though superficial, late 19th-century modernisation.

The two-storey main house has a regular, though not symmetrical, four-window front with late 19th-century casement windows with glazing bars. The front door is located slightly left of centre and incorporates a late 19th-century part-glazed four-panel door with a matching flat hood supported by shaped timber brackets. The roof is gable-ended.

The interior largely displays the results of the late 19th-century modernisation, with virtually all the joinery and fittings from that period intact. Some 17th-century carpentry detail remains. The bar features a plain soffit-chamfered axial beam. The hall has a mid-17th-century axial beam with broad ovolo mouldings and mutilated bar-step stops. The kitchen has a soffit-chamfered and step-stopped crossbeam. Straight, probably 17th or 18th-century, A-frame roof principals are present, though the roof itself is inaccessible. All fireplaces are now blocked by 19th-century grates.

According to ownership records dating back to 1890, the building was formerly known as the New Inn. The property is notable for having undergone minimal modernization since that time. While C17 features may be concealed behind C19 plaster, the building’s primary significance lies in its remarkably well-preserved late 19th-century public house character. The Drewe Arms is part of a group of attractive listed buildings near the Church of Holy Trinity.