The Masons Arms public house and outbuilding, Wilmcote, Warwickshire

Summary

A former public house of around 1800 which was extended around 1900, and a detached outbuilding of similar date.

Description

A former public house of around 1800 which was extended around 1900, and a detached outbuilding of similar date.

MATERIALS: both buildings are in blocks of local Wilmington Blue Lias limestone with red brick details. The stone in both is laid in courses, with the courses having different heights. All roofs are covered in clay tiles, doors and windows are timber. There is a brick section to the rear of the outbuilding.

PLAN: the pub faces south to the road and has a main block of two storeys plus an attic level, it is orientated roughly east / west. This main block has two additions to the east end; a single-storey wing to the front which projects forward from the line of the main block, and a later two-storey addition behind it. These additions are also orientated east / west with gable ends to the east. A single-storey porch extends further south to the street from the single-storey wing. A small single-storey store is to the north-west corner.

The outbuilding is on the same orientation as the public house but is rectangular in plan, built in two phases east and west with a single-storey extension to the rear north wall.

EXTERIOR: roofs are all pitched with gable ends. A wide, rebuilt, brick chimney rises through the apex of the east gable of the main block and a smaller brick stack rises through the base of the south slope of the two-storey rear wing. Openings are generally under segmental brick arches. Windows are varied, with some multi-paned examples with central opening casements dating to the earliest phase of the building. There are sashes which correspond with the alterations made around 1900; these generally have an eight-light top sash and single pane lower sash with horns, some of these have smaller four-over-one sashes to the margins forming a triple window. There is also a variety of mid and late-C20 windows. The top three courses of the stone walls beneath the eaves of the main block are thin and stepped up outwards to form a slight overhang on the front and back elevations.

At ground floor level the front, south facing elevation of the main block has two central single doorways, the one to the left is blocked, the right has a C20 timber door. There is a C20 large, top-hung 12-over-12 light round-headed window either side of the doorways. The first floor has two round-headed 18-light triple windows, these are centred over the windows below but are not so tall. The front, single-storey wing to the east has a large window with 28 lights central to its south elevation. Projecting further south at right-angles from the east end of the single-storey wing is a porch with a rubbed-brick flat arch lintel over a C20 timber door. Behind the single-storey wing is the south roof slope of the two-storey block added around 1900.

The west elevation is solid except for a lunette window in the gable and off-centre below that at first floor level a small C20 window. There is a small single-storey outshot to the north-western corner.

At ground floor level, the rear, north facing elevation of the older part of the building has two openings to the late-C20 conservatory (excluded from this listing); a single door width opening to the west end, and a double opening centrally. At the eastern end, in the rear wing of around 1900, is a triple sash window. First floor windows are, from west to east: a round-headed 12-light casement under a segmental brick lintel, two C20 single-pane windows, a triple sash in a projecting bay under a pitched roof, then (in the east wing) is a triple sash and a narrower, four-over-one sash.

The east elevation of the main block at attic level has a lunette window matching that in the west gable, with the pinnacle of the gable truncated by the chimney. Below this is the gable end of the two-storey addition to the north of around 1900, then moving south; a short flat roof, the gable end of the single-storey wing, then the side of the front porch. Windows here are late-Victorian sashes with a casement to the porch. Heading north from the two storey wing is the late-C20 toilet block then conservatory.

INTERIOR: there are four stone vaulted cellar rooms, with a barrel chute in blue bricks leading from the south-eastern room to the hatch east of the main block of the pub. Stone steps lead up to the north-eastern corner of the kitchen.

The ground floor has some concrete floors and some flagstone. The western rooms have been used as a commercial kitchen and extended eastwards to incorporate what was the hallway to the blocked western doorway of the pair in the front of the main block. Larger ceiling beams are visible in the kitchen and eastern bars, and the central hall area has joists and spine beams visible

The central fireplace which rises through the eastern gable of the main block is sealed off, but the smaller one at the rear of the eastern single-storey wing remains in a stone surround. A simple wooden winder staircase leads up from the back of the entrance hall to first and attic floors. Some of the upper floor bedrooms retain fire surrounds. The roof structure retains its original purlins, with some rafters having been replaced.

SUBSIDIARY FEATURES:

OUTBUILDING SIX METRES TO THE WEST

EXTERIOR: this is two abutting, double height, single-storey buildings with the western building having a slightly higher ridge height and shallower pitch to the roof than the eastern. Walls have occasional ‘S’ shaped ties. There is a single-storey addition to the rear in two phases; stone to the west and brick to the east.

The south, road facing, elevation has two 12-light casement windows to the east end at ground floor level, a large C20 window below the eaves in the central part of the western section, and a small round-headed opening with a grille to its lower part at ground floor at the west end of the building. All the openings have blue brick cills, and those at lower level have segmental red brick lintels. The west gable elevation is solid except for a single large opening at the upper level. The east gable end has an inserted triple garage door and a 12-light casement above. The east end of the brick addition is lit by a small window then a larger lunette. The upper part of the north elevation is covered by a catslide continuation of roof slope over the rear addition which has a variety of openings.

INTERIOR: the western building is deeper and higher than the eastern. The addition to the rear is divided into three discrete store rooms to the eastern end, and a long room which spans both front buildings to the west and allows access through to the western building only. Internal walls are a mixture of stone, brick and concrete blockwork. Floors are concrete, and much of the roof structure is C20.

History

The former Masons Arms public house faces the north side of Aston Cantlow Road, the main road through the village of Wilmcote. The pub is to the front of a large plot in the rear of which historic mapping depicts large stone pits and a quarry. The Masons Arms is understood to have been built as an inn around 1800 as part of the expansion of the quarry with which it shares the plot. At this time the Birmingham to Stratford Canal (completed 1816) was under construction, and this may well have been the explanation for the change from what was formerly small-scale extraction of stone to a larger, more organised quarry. Famously, the Blue Lias Wilmcote limestone was used by Charles Barry (1795-1860) for flooring in his Houses of Parliament (Grade I, National Heritage List for England 1226284).

An outbuilding around six metres west of the Masons Arms, also on the roadside, appears to be contemporary with the public house and is understood to have been used as offices for the quarry. These buildings both appear on the 1886 Ordnance Survey (OS) map with further outbuildings depicted to the north. The 1905 OS map identifies a building immediately north of the pub as a smithy. Most of the outbuildings are depicted on the 1926 OS map, but by the time of survey of the 1969 Ordnance Survey map only the roadside building to the west and one building to the north-east remained.

The Masons Arms was purchased by the Flowers brewery in 1897, soon after which a rear two-storey wing was added to the east end of the building and a new porch was added to the front. Another remodelling was carried out in the 1970s, and again in 1990 when a large rear conservatory was added. The public house ceased trading in 2019.

Reasons for Listing

The Masons Arms, Wilmcote, is listed at Grade II for the following principal reasons:

Architectural Interest:

* the Masons Arms is a vernacular building whose function as a public house is discernible by its two doorways, roadside location and its large size in comparison with typical domestic properties of its date;

* the survival of some of the outbuildings is a reminder of the role the public house played as part of an early industrial complex;

* internally, despite alterations, the layout of rooms and phases of renovation can be determined, and features such as the barrel ramp in the cellars are specific to its history as a public house.

Historic Interest:

* the Masons Arms takes its name from the predominant local trade at the time of its construction, and it would have been a meeting place for those employed in the quarrying and stone working trades, and this gives it good historic interest as an example of a local public house.

Group Value:

* the Masons Arms shares group value with the nearby Grade II listed Swan House Hotel and other nearby listed buildings.

External Links

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