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Home > Cambridgeshire > Caxton > George Inn

George Inn

 


The George Inn was situated on Ermine Street and is now in residential use. It was built in the late 16th century, refronted in the early 18th century and altered in the 19th and 20th centuries. The building is constructed from red brick with steeply pitched slate and plain tile roofs and is of two storey with attic and cellars. The inn had a Georgian front and the rear is an example of completely preserved Elizabethan brick.
From: An Inventory of the Historical Monuments in the County of Cambridgeshire, 1968
Caxton Manor, for a time The George Inn, consists of a house and buildings.
The house is two-storeyed with attics and dates from c1600. The walls are predominantly of red brick and there are slated roofs. The plan is a gable-ended main range with a single-carriage entry facing E across the street to the former market place, and a wing at an obtuse angle to the SW.
The house was converted to an inn in the 18th century when it was refronted and had the interior largely remodelled, although it later reverted to private use. There are a number of 19th century and modern modifications: the floor of the carriage entry has been raised and its ends closed by glazed screens and a centrally placed clock turret, dated 1887, now dominates the street elevation.
The Georgian E front is symmetrically designed in seven bays with the three middle bays forming a slightly recessed centrepiece. The front door is set in a modern glazed screen under an 18th century elliptical-headed arch at the street end of the old entry. The hung-sash windows are original except for the second from the S on the ground-floor which has recently replaced a door. The wall face rises to a parapet, behind which are two small hipped dormers. It is broken in the centre by the projecting and gabled clock turret.
The W side is almost entirely in original dark red brick of c1600, rather irregular in size and bond. The principal features are two narrow tower-like gabled projections, between them is the W arch of the carriage entry with a depressed triangular head. Above this arch is a wide original window divided into twelve equal lights by brick mullions and transoms with a somewhat defaced entablature over the head. A number of other original windows, mostly blocked or mutilated, survive of smaller but similar character.
The adjoining N.W. side of the S.W. wing is similar in character, but the gabled upper part of its S.W. end is of plastered studwork. The S.E. side is also similar but has been partially cased in modern brick or plastered over. These subsidiary elevations have a number of original mullioned windows of stucco covered cut brick, more or less imperfectly preserved.
The house retains few original features inside. Some ceiling beams are stop chamfered and one in a cellar immediately N. of the entry is moulded. The principle rooms on both floors of the main range are now organised inn-fashion along N-S. passageways running the length of the W. side. The 18th century staircase housed in the N. projection ascends to the first floor in two flights. There are two simple stone fireplace surrounds and several doors of six fielded panels, also of the 18th century.
The buildings include a brick-built barn in prolongation of the SW wing and approximately coeval with it. The S.E. wall of this barn is almost entirely masked by the N.W. wall of later out-buildings in an adjoining property. Four buttresses, disposed at irregular intervals, are partly visible however. They appear to be early additions designed to arrest settlement. The entire S.E. wall both to the house and the outbuilding, has subsided continuously, perhaps as a result of having been built over a filled-in boundary ditch. A free standing stable block, somewhat altered, is parallel to and behind the main range. Also of the 17th century.

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