1919 – “The Stone & Faggot” Inn, Little Yeldham, Essex

Architect: Basil Oliver

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Closed as a public house, and converted into a private residence. In the village bakery in the 18th century, faggots of sticks were used to heat stones on which bread was baked. In later years the bakery was converted to an Inn and the name adopted.

Published in The Building News, July 30 1919: “”The Stone and Fagot,” a small village inn near Castle Hedingham, has been rebuilt, the old thatched house having been burned down. The only part not destroyed were the gate and the bakehouse incorporated in the new premises. A spacious bar, adapted to the limited trade of the house, obviates the need of a taproom, but there is a small bar-parlour for business transactions. The private rooms are well arranged, and all the fireplaces are on internal walls with two simple chimney stacks of sandfaced 2-in. multi-coloured bricks with wide flush joints. Roofing tiles of local make from Gestingthorpe are used with hip tiles purposely made. The “Fletton” brick walls, keyed for plaster, are externally finished with lime stucco scratched with a guilloche pattern and lime whitened like neighbouring buildings. The bar has a central counter suggested by the French ” estaminet,” it being thought that continental ideas will be more and more adopted in public-house design. Elm block flooring is used, and fixed seats are attached to the walls carried on steel cantilevers so as to allow sweeping below the settles free of all obstruction. The woodwork is stained green, and the dado shoulder high painted to match the skirting being black after the French fashion. The fireplace of splayed brickwork, as designed by the late Philip Webb, has a movable iron grid of simple pattern. No wallpapers are used, but the walls are distempered. The photograph reproduced t-day is in this year’s Royal Academy Exhibition. Mr. Basil Oliver A.R.I.B.A.. of 7, Southampton Street, Bloomsbury, is the architect. Messrs. Mauldon and Sutton, of Sudbury, Suffolk, were the builders.”