The White Hart With Attached Gate Piers

The White Hart with Attached Gate Piers

A hotel on Sadler Street in Wells, comprising some 16th and 17th century fabric with substantial alterations in the late 19th century and refronting in the early 20th century. The building is constructed of rubble with a rendered front featuring applied timber-framing, and has double Roman or pantile roofs.

The plan is complex. The wide parallel-plan front range has a transverse gabled roof. Attached to the left rear is a deep wing with its own gabled roof facing the rear slope of the front range. The building appears to have originated as a long narrow early range set gable to the street, later reroofed at the front when two bays were added. The early range may originally have been a 3-room plan with cross passage, entered on the north side from a side passage or courtyard, with the two rooms nearest the street being heated. At the rear right is a gabled wing at first floor level above a wide carriageway.

The exterior is of two storeys with five windows. The first floor has plain sashes with margin-pane surrounds to stooled sills. At ground floor there are three sashes on one side and two on the other; the upper sashes have twenty small panes, the lower sashes are plain. Between bays three and four is an early four-panel door in a plat-band surround. A small brick stack rises at the left gable. The building has a small plinth, dying to the right, a moulded string above the first floor, and a plat band below a blocking-course or frieze with plain parapet carrying two false gables with timber-framing in two planes.

The return gable to the left is plain rubble, stepped down to a one-storey flat-roofed addition. Set back from this is a long two-storey wing with various sashes, but notably a four-pane sash at each floor to the left in 17th century flush chamfered stone surrounds; that at ground floor has a central mullion stub. A brick stack stands at the street end of the gable. Beyond is a further, lower wing.

The right return features a plain rubble gable with short flat-roofed addition, and a single-storey flat-roofed unit against the set-back wing. This wing has a two-light casement, a four-pane sash, and a very small slit light with flush chamfered surround at first floor. Below is a 20th century entrance, and to its right a wide 20th century door beneath a five-pane transom-light. Returned at the end of this wing is a wide gabled unit, rendered, carried on three 17th century chamfered and stopped beams. The throughway is cobbled, and in the wall to its left is a three-light stone casement with ovolo-mould mullions and surround.

The interior is accessed through a stone-paved passage. To the left of the passage is what appears to be an original external wall containing a former stone-framed casement, and a stone entrance doorway with four-centred head over a 17th century door. To the right of the passage is a shop. To the left are two rooms with a dividing fireplace set close to the passage, then the staircase, with a further early room beyond. The middle room has a six-compartment ceiling with 16th century moulded beams and a rebuilt fireplace; it opens to the front room, mainly refitted in the 20th century but retaining a fireplace and an interesting cast-iron fireback with scrolled head and figures.

The staircase occupies part of the assumed transverse cross-passage. The rear room is at a slightly lower floor level with low ceiling, interrupted by a stair in one corner. The ceiling is divided into six compartments with deep chamfered beams. There is a wide open fireplace to the external wall with brick cheeks but a large stone lintel to a very flat arch.

The staircase is dog-leg plan with plain detailing at first floor. The parlour, with coved ceiling, runs the full width of the street front.

The rear wing has 19th century king and queen-post trusses, with pantiles underlined with lath and plaster.

To the left of the front is a pair of square rendered gate piers with capping swept to a ball finial, though the gates themselves are missing.

There is a suggestion that this building may once have been the Bishop's guest house. It later became the Harts Head Inn. The street frontage successfully conceals an interior of considerable architectural interest.