Kings Head Hotel

WELLS

ST5445 HIGH STREET 662-1/7/108 (North side) 12/11/53 No.36 Kings Head Hotel

GV II*

Inn. Late C18 facade to C14 building. Brick with stone dressings, all colourwashed, possible timber-frame; double roof, hipped with ridges at right angles to road covered with double Roman clay tiles, brick chimney stacks. PLAN: right-angle plan, 2 bays wide, with jettied block to front and hall to rear. EXTERIOR: 3 storeys, 2 bays. Rendered plinth, plain parapet with simple coping, ground floor has fascia across whole of facade, with a 6-flush-panel door in beaded architrave to left, then a composite window of 6 sash units of 4+16+4+4+16+4 panes respectively, with continuous sill and large centre mullion. Above are sash windows in plain openings with 5-keystoned segmental arched heads, the centre keystone hooded, with 20-pane window to first floor and 18-pane windows to second. Projecting sign on elaborate early C20 bracket set between all four upper windows. Plain partly-rendered return on east side with large painted signboard having segmental arched head, set at high level. Building wraps round No.38 (qv) with return elevation along Union Street, C19 rendered and rubble work colourwashed, double Roman clay tiled roof, plain gable, brick chimney. 2 storeys, 2 bays. Sash windows of several patterns to first floor, below a blocked doorway bay 1 and a blocked window bay 2, a segmental arched 2-light casement window bay 3 and a vertical boarded door to bay 4. INTERIOR: much modified-essentially in three parts. Front portion has some deep chamfered beams to ground and first floor, indications of former jetty in frame at ground floor level. Centre portion open through to 4-bay roof with 2 intermediate trusses flanking one main truss, the latter a two-tier base cruck with upper cruck surmounting truss with short principals and moulded and cusped braces with sunk spandrels; undersides of bracery and lower collar moulded; east slope has 3 ranks of purlins, west roof slope cut away below second purlin, sundry curbed windbraces, intermediate trusses with upper arched collar only. Other features in this section are the two staircases up to gallery, and up from this to second floor front, both of c1800 pattern. Extension at rear mostly C19/C20. A good late medieval town house with substantial remains of a very fine roof structure which invites comparison with the Glastonbury Abbey Barns; sketch drawings in VAG. (Gilson RG: Vernacular Architecture Group Report: 1978-).

Listing NGR: ST5485945710