Tudor Hotel

Hotel dating from the late 16th or early 17th century, refronted and extended in the early 19th century. The building sits on the south side of St Mary Street and presents a jettied two-storey façade with a three-window range.

The ground floor is constructed of painted brick and stone, while the first floor displays applied timber-framing (dating from around 1920) over stucco. The roof is clad with zig-zag pantile and features brick stacks at the gable ends. The building originally formed a three-roomed L-shaped plan with a rear courtyard, now built over. An early 19th-century rear left wing converted this to a U-shaped plan.

The symmetrical first floor is jettied and contains three early 19th-century horned sash windows with margin panes. These are articulated by a pattern of five timber trefoil-headed panels with quatrefoils above and diagonals below. Beneath the windows are horizontal ornamented terracotta panels. Moulded brackets support the jetty.

The ground floor has two late 19th-century horned 2/2-pane sash windows to the left. To the right of centre stands a circa 1600 oak door with a very wide Tudor arch, strap hinges, hollow moulding, and seven vertical panels. The rear face has heavy horizontal planks, a wrought-iron bolt and lock. The Tudor-arched architrave is chamfered and stopped above 19th-century base cladding, with a bootscraper to the right. Further right is a 20th-century leaded shop window flanked by 19th-century panelled pilasters. The wall to the far right steps back to the original line, revealing painted coursed rubblestone corbelling that extends to the original jetty line.

The interior is divided into two front rooms by a through-passage angled to the left at the end. Both rooms retain 18th and 19th-century panelled doors.

The left room features a hollow-chamfered lateral beam (now with 20th-century central support) and an open fireplace with herringbone tiling to the back. The plasterwork to the ceiling is irregular and without a border, suggesting it has been repositioned, consistent with a 17th-century date.

The right room is fully panelled, mostly with reset circa 1600 work. It contains a small cornice below a frieze of horizontal panels articulated by short pilasters, all beneath a deeper wooden cornice and plaster frieze of undulating fronds with fruit and flowers, heavily painted. Hollow-moulded beams divide the quartered ceiling into moulded geometric panels of eight-pointed stars with borders and large fleurs-de-lys, predominantly executed in the late 19th century. The flat-arched open fireplace to the right has three ovolo mouldings to the intrados stopped at the base and a 19th-century overmantel.

The rear right wing, angled to the left, contains a late 16th or 17th-century ovolo-moulded four-light first-floor window facing the former courtyard and an open fire on the right-hand angled wall with a 19th-century overmantel. The fireplace features late 16th or 17th-century stop-chamfered bressumer and jambs. The room above has a Tudor-arched fireplace with sunk spandrels using the same stack.

The roof structure comprises late 16th or early 17th-century collar and queen-post trusses with butt purlins and mortices for wind-braces, probably of elm. The collar is braced with massive principal rafters and trenched purlins. The roof in the rear right wing, not accessible for inspection, has been noted as having substantial principal rafters. The rear left wing features an early 19th-century collar-truss roof.