Mansion House Inn

Mansion House Inn is a mid-18th century house, now a public house, located on the north side of High Street in Bridgwater. The front facade is painted brick with painted stone cornices to the eaves and ground floor, rusticated quoins that rise to form kneelers to a 20th-century coping, stone cills, and a plinth. The roof is steeply pitched, with a late 19th-century crested ridge, pantile to the rear, and double Roman tile to the front, with brick stacks to the gable ends. The left return is of painted rubble stone, rendered to the top. The building has a double-depth plan with a rear extension to the left, forming an L-plan.

It is two storeys high with a four-window range. The first-floor windows are positioned to the sides, flanking a wide space for an inn sign. The windows have gauged brick flat arches, with keyed lintels, above C19 horned 2/2-pane sash windows in forward frames. On the ground floor, there are flat arches over six early 20th-century windows of varying widths, and a centrally located double 2-panel door. Narrow, vertical windows flank the door, with the windows to the sides having three rows of two panes. The left return features painted rubble stone and brick, rendered to the top, with flat gauged brick arches to wide 2/2-pane sash windows to the right, and a double 2-panel door with bolection moulding below a brick and timber lintel. The rear wing to the left has two 2-light casement windows at eaves level. On the ground floor, to the left, there is a timber lintel above a fixed window containing two rows of four panes, likely a former doorway. To the right is a late 19th-century tripartite horned 2/2-pane sash window.

The interior includes a room to the rear with an open fireplace and a segmental arch backing onto the main block. The upper room has a mid-18th-century fireplace to the right end and an unusually high ceiling. The roof is said to contain four A-frame trusses and two rows of dowelled purlins.

The building was constructed on the site of an earlier church house. A committee was appointed by the corporation in 1765 to oversee its rebuilding. It operated as a school in the later 18th century, later becoming an inn, with the upper floor used as an assembly room.