Kings Head Hotel

The Kings Head Hotel is an inn with a late 18th-century facade concealing a 14th-century building in Wells. It is a building of group value, recognized for its significant architectural and historical importance.

The building is constructed of brick with stone dressings, all colourwashed, and may have a timber-frame. It has a double roof, hipped with ridges at right angles to the road, covered with double Roman clay tiles, and brick chimney stacks. The plan follows a right-angle layout, with a jettied front block and a hall to the rear.

The exterior is three stories high and two bays wide. It has a rendered plinth and a plain parapet with simple coping. The ground floor has a fascia across the entire facade, featuring a 6-panel flush door in a beaded architrave to the left, and a composite sash window comprising six sections of 4+16+4+4+16+4 panes with a continuous sill and a large centre mullion. Above are sash windows in plain openings with 5-keystoned segmental arched heads; the centre keystone is hooded, with a 20-pane window on the first floor and 18-pane windows on the second floor. An elaborate early 20th-century bracket supports a projecting sign positioned between the four upper windows.

The east return is plain, partly-rendered, and colourwashed, with a large painted signboard featuring a segmental arched head at a high level. The building wraps around No. 38, with a return elevation along Union Street constructed of 19th-century rendered and rubble work, colourwashed, and having a double Roman clay tiled roof and a plain gable. This section has two stories and two bays, with sash windows of various patterns on the first floor. The ground floor features a blocked doorway in bay 1, a blocked window in bay 2, a segmental arched 2-light casement window in bay 3, and a vertical boarded door in bay 4.

The interior has been extensively modified, exhibiting three distinct sections. The front portion retains some deep chamfered beams on the ground and first floors, and indications of a former jetty in the frame at ground level. The centre portion is open to a four-bay roof with two intermediate trusses flanking a main truss. This main truss is a two-tier base cruck with an upper cruck surmounting it, featuring short principals and moulded, cusped braces with sunk spandrels; the undersides of the bracery and lower collar are moulded. The east roof slope has three ranks of purlins, while the west slope is cut away below the second purlin. Other features in this section include two staircases – one up to a gallery and another from the gallery to the second floor front, both of circa 1800 pattern. A rear extension is mostly from the 19th and 20th centuries.

The Kings Head Hotel is a good example of a late medieval town house, with substantial remains of a very fine roof structure that resembles the Glastonbury Abbey Barns, with related sketch drawings held in the Victoria and Albert Museum archives.