The Olde Bull Inn PH

The Olde Bull Inn is a public house with a wholly rendered exterior, probably over local rubble stone, featuring mock timber framing on the upper floor and Welsh slate roofs. The building has an L-shaped plan with the main range facing the Market Place and a wing facing the High Street, with a later wing infilling the angle between them.

The main elevation faces the Market Place but no longer has an entrance. The ground floor contains three altered openings with 20th-century cross-framed casements; the right-hand opening was originally the entrance to the cross-passage. The upper floor displays mock timber framing in square panels with a 2-light and two 3-light 16th-century windows featuring hollow chamfers, 4-centred heads and label moulds with plain glazing. Between the first and second windows stands a wall stack that is entirely 20th-century brick above the eaves. The left-hand return has a 20th-century cross-framed window on the ground floor and a corbelled stack above it, though the chimney above the roof is 20th-century brick. The rear wing contains a 3-light 20th-century window below and a 3-light 16th-century window above. The wing has been extended by a lower two-storey gabled wing in the 20th century, which conceals a large external stack against the 16th-century gable end. This stack has two flues but is truncated at eaves level, with only one continuing as 20th-century brick. An additional single-storey gabled wing occupies the angle between the two main wings.

The ground floor has been opened out into one interconnecting bar, though the different original spaces remain recognisable. The main range shows evidence of a cross-passage at the north end where it meets No 1 Cross Street. The street door has been converted to a window, but the rear door leading to the toilets is stone-framed with a 4-centred head, possibly the original front door moved to the rear or remaining in its original position. Mortices in the beam north of this door indicate where a post-and-panel screen once stood, suggesting the Bull originally extended further north by another room and that the dividing wall with No 1 Cross Street is a later insertion. The beams and floor joists in the main range are stopped and chamfered, though there has been considerable alteration. The rear wing retains more of its original character, with a ceiling of entirely stopped and chamfered beams and joists. A corbelled stack is visible outside the rear door of the cross-passage, which would have heated the room that extended northward into what is now No 1. The staircase is a rather damaged early 18th-century dog-leg.

The upper floor reveals no visible features other than the inside faces of the 16th-century windows, one beam with a run-out stop, and one roll-moulded principal rafter and its purlin, only partly visible. This strongly suggests a Great Room with a high ceiling intended to be displayed, or in the context of a late medieval house, an Upper Hall. The corbelled stack evidence indicates this room originally extended further north and could have been lit by three of the 3-light windows. Now only two remain, each lighting a bedroom with a partition between them. No other part of the roof structure was visible.