Crown Hotel

WELLS

ST5445 MARKET PLACE 662-1/7/147 (South side) 12/11/53 No.8 Crown Hotel (Formerly Listed as: MARKET PLACE (South side) Nos.8 AND 10)

GV II

Hotel. Late C16, C20 shop front. Probably timber-framed, rendered and colourwashed, clay pantiled roof with plain gable. PLAN: a narrow frontage range, two rooms deep, with central chimney breast, steeply pitched roof set gable to the street; the building is connected to those on either side, all forming part of the Crown Hotel (qv). EXTERIOR: 2 storeys with attic, single wide bay. Ground floor has two casement windows of 3 and 2-lights, with door to right. First floor has a shallow oriel window of 1+5+1 light with ovolo-mould mullions on three shaped brackets, with a slate lean-to pentice roof, attic window in gable has a small 2-light leaded casement. Crosswing to rear, the south end obscured by later building. INTERIOR: the ground floor has a large transverse beam in the front room, otherwise mostly of the C20, and the rear room, at a lower level, has a 4-compartment ceiling with C16 moulded beams, and a square stone fireplace. The roof has high collars and a large square rough butt purlin; at the rear is an arch-braced truss with hollow-chamfer mould and a very heavy purlin and cambered tie. In the N wall are remains of a blocked C16 door to a 4-centred arch. HISTORICAL NOTE: built in the late C16 by a Canon resident in the Canonical House (The Exchequer) on the site of the Town Hall (qv), in what was then his garden. (Town and Country Planning Working Papers: Scrase AJ: Wells: A Study of Town Origins: Bristol: 1982-).

Listing NGR: ST5501845753