Description

ST 47 SE WRAXALL CLEVEDON ROAD (south-west side)

3/184 The Widdicombe Arms (formerly
listed as The Battleaxes Inn
27.4.73

G.V II

Village temperance inn, estate club house and caretaker's house, now a public
house with integral restaurant and accommodation. Designed 1880-1881, dated
1882, by William Butterfield for Anthony Gibbs of Tyntesfield. Coursed rubble
with freestone dressings and irregular quoins; mock timber framing to some of the
first floor; plain tiled roofs; ashlar and rubble stacks. An irregular and
asymmetrical group with the inn at the south-east and the former club hall and
former caretaker's house to the north-west. The inn is 2 storeys with a central
section of 2 coped gables with finials; the left gable has a chequer-board pattern;
single light casement and cross windows on ground floor; 2- and 5-lights on first
floor. The right window has a plain architrave and is surmounted by a flat gable
with pinnacles; downpipe with a decorative Gothic style hopper and the letter G (Gibbs);
off-centre gabled projecting porch with clasping buttresses, panelled doors in a
hollow-chamfered, pointed surround under a hoodmould. To the left of the centre is
a 2-bay section of irregular heights: at the right is a 2-light casement window with
shouldered heads, and a timber-framed first floor; at the left is a projecting,
single-storey, gabled wing with 2-light casement windows. To the right of the centre
is a further irregular 2-bay section with a blocked door to the left and a C20 bow-
fronted extension to the right; timber-framed first floor with a gabled dormer on
corbels. The C20 extension joins the inn to the former club hall, through a porch
with a hipped roof. The hall is of a single storey, 5 bays; timber-framed on a
rubble base; single light casement windows; the centre projects as a 1:2:1 light
canted stone bay, the windows have ashlar surrounds and shouldered heads, half
pyramidal roof with a cast-iron finial. The north-west gable end is stone and has
a 2-light Geometrical style window. Set back at the right is a single storey
entrance wing; plank door in an ashlar surround with a cusped head and flanking
buttress. Behind this - facing onto the Grove - is the former caretaker's house:
2 storeys, a flat roof concealed behind a moulded cornice, moulded string course;
2 bays, 2- and 3-light casement windows with, chamfered mullions and under relieving
arches on the ground floor; central plank door in a segmental headed surround and
under a triangular dripmould. The rear elevations are also quite irregular and
asymmetrical with bows, bays and turrets on 3 floors. The interior of the inn is
altered butthe former hall has a timbered roof (P. Thompson, William Butterfield,
1971).

Listing NGR: ST4952971531

External Links

• Historic England Listing
• Wikidata Q26421894

External links are from the relevant listing authority and, where applicable, Wikidata. Wikidata IDs may be related buildings as well as this specific building. If you want to add or update a link, you will need to do so by editing the Wikidata entry.

Recommended Books

• 
  Liverpool: Pevsner City Guide (Pevsner Architectural Guides: City Guides)
• 
  Specifications for Building Conservation: Volume 1: External Structure: Practical Examples v. 2
• 
  Period Property Manual (New Ed)
• 
  Listed Buildings, Conservation Areas and Monuments
• 
  [(Cumberland and Westmorland)] [By (author) Nikolaus Pevsner] published on (January, 1967)
• 
  Hertfordshire (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England)