Building record BMF 038 - The Queen's Head Inn, The Street

The Queen’s Head Inn is a grade II-listed building at the southern entrance to the village of Bramfield. The site may represent part of the medieval market place. The building consists of a mid-16th century timber-framed range to the north and a taller brick cross-wing of the late-18th century to the south. The timber-framed structure was known as ‘Skeltons’ in 1584, and although much altered can still be recognised as a two-cell Tudor artisan’s house containing a hall entered by a cross-passage on the right with a pair of service rooms to the left. The position of the original entrance remains unchanged, and the rear wall preserves two rare diamond-mullioned windows, but the hall ceiling has been removed and the entire roof was replaced when the brick wing was added. The latter survives relatively unaltered, and is exceptionally narrow with just 12 ft (3.6 m) between its walls. The layout of this wing is unusual, and suggests it was built as an inn, with three ground-floor rooms of which two were entered directly from the road and the other, designed as a kitchen, only from the rear yard. One of the two southern entrances has been blocked and replaced by a new door in the eastern gable. The former kitchen retains an impressive fireplace against its rear (western) gable and an intact 16th century chamfered ceiling that respects the building’s narrow width but appears to have been re-used in its entirety from elsewhere – or possibly from a predecessor of the present structure on the same site (S1).