The Bowling Pavilion, Pergolas and Garden Walls at the Black Horse public house, Northfield, Weoley, Birmingham

Summary

A series of public house garden buildings which surround a crown green bowling green, laid out in 1929-30 to the designs of Francis Goldsborough of Bateman and Bateman.

Description

A series of public house garden buildings which surround a crown green bowling green, laid out in 1929-30 to the designs of Francis Goldsborough of Bateman and Bateman.

MATERIALS: the walls and pergola columns are of Cotswold stone rubble. Pergola lintels are of pebble-faced concrete. The pavilion has Cotswold stone walling and a plain tiled roof.

PLAN: to the north, south and east sides of the garden are boundary walls. The area immediately to the west of the pub is a terrace with flagged surface and this is divided from the bowling green by a screen of pergola posts which extend for the length of the west front. The pavilion is placed at the centre of the west side of the green and has a ground floor with bar counters at either end, kitchens and lavatories, and a beer cellar. To its east, bordering the green, is a further run of pergola posts.

DESCRIPTION
Boundary walls: the wall to the north is divided into bays by square buttresses which have ashlar caps. The southern wall has panels of wooden fencing to its top and a double gate approached by steps at its eastern end. It acts as a retaining wall to the raised bowling green and is taller on its southern side as a result of the natural gradient. The eastern wall abuts the south end of the pub building and has a round-arched entrance which now has a wooden gate, but originally had a wrought-iron gate, which is stored on site.

Pergolas: the pergola posts along the east side of the green have lost their lintels. Those to the west, in front of the pavilion, have paired lintels of pebble-faced concrete. Both sets have moulded, ashlar caps.

Bowling Pavilion: EXTERIOR: the pavilion has a hipped roof and a recessed centre with five bays, divided by square, wooden posts. The central three bays have glazed, double doors and the two lateral bays have windows to their upper bodies. Projecting at either side are shallow wings with stone walling and three-light casements. To either flank are doors to outside lavatories.
INTERIOR: the central room has a segmental barrel-vaulted plaster ceiling. There are bar counters to the northern and southern ends of the room, for serving beer or tea and coffee, and there is a continuous, fixed bench seat along the western wall, above which are fixed honours boards.

History

Inter-war ‘improved’ or ‘reformed’ pubs stemmed from a desire to cut back on the amount of drunkenness associated with conventional Victorian and Edwardian public houses. Licensing magistrates and breweries combined to improve the facilities and reputation of the building type. Improved pubs were generally more spacious than their predecessors, often with restaurant facilities, function rooms and gardens, and consciously appealed to families and to a mix of incomes and classes. Central, island serveries with counters opening onto several bar areas allowed the monitoring of customers and also the efficient distribution of staff to whichever area needed service. Many, although not all, of the new pubs were built as an accompaniment to new suburban development around cities, and a policy of ‘fewer and better’ was followed by magistrates both in town and on the outskirts. A licence might be granted for a new establishment on surrender of one or more licences for smaller urban premises. Approximately 1,000 new pubs were built in the 1920s – the vast majority of them on ‘improved’ lines - and almost 2,000 in the period 1935-39. Neo-Tudor and Neo-Georgian were the favoured styles, although others began to appear at the end of the period.

The Black Horse was designed by Francis Goldsbrough (of Bateman and Bateman) for the brewers John Davenport & Sons. The brewery dated back to the early C19 and had great success in the early C20 with their home deliveries of beer, called ‘Beer at Home’, allied to a string of public houses. The previous pub on the site was demolished and the present Black Horse opened in 1929. The garden was finished in the following year.

The original plan for the garden was a formal layout of flower beds and paths with three pavilions at the western end containing lavatories and a tool shed (see SOURCES, Crawford and Thorne). However, a flat bowling green had been a feature of the garden of the previous pub on the site and this was retained, with revised landscaping to its surround. In the mid-1980s the green was adapted to form a crown green with a cambered centre. The present pavilion building was designed to serve as an overspill from the pub, to provide for ‘charabanc parties which need not thus invade and congest the licensed rooms of the house’ (see SOURCES, Oliver). It originally had a thatched roof and an open loggia on the east side, facing the bowling green. The roof is now tiled and the loggia has been enclosed by a glazed screen. The pergola posts originally all supported concrete beams, but those on the east side of the garden, to the west of the pub, have now been removed.

Reasons for Listing

The Bowling Pavilion, Pergolas and Garden Walls at the Black Horse public house, Northfield, Birmingham are listed at Grade II for the following principal reasons:

* Group value: these items, which were designed by Francis Goldsborough and built at the same time, have strong group value with the listed Grade II* Black Horse Public House, Northfield, Birmingham (NHLE 1343340);

* Architectural quality: the pavilion and pergolas have architectural quality in their own right and complement the aesthetic of the group of pub and garden buildings;

* Intact survival: despite a certain amount of alteration, which is to be expected of buildings of this type and date, the group of garden buildings at the Black Horse is largely intact and gives a strong impression of the functioning of the pub and its surroundings.

External Links

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