The Castle Tap, 120 Castle Street

Summary

A public house, believed to have been rebuilt in the mid-C19 on the site of an earlier coaching house.

Reasons for Designation

The Castle Tap, 120 Castle Street, Reading, is listed at Grade II for the following principal reasons:

Architectural interest:

* as a mid-C19 building which contributes to the character of an architecturally varied historic streetscape.

Group value:

* the building is in close proximity to a large number of listed buildings and forms part of a strong historic grouping.

History

A coaching inn existed on the site of the Castle Tap in 1699 with the establishment known as the Horse and Jockey as early as 1779 (Reading Mercury, 18 January 1779, 2).

Under its previous name as the Horse and Jockey, the pub sold tickets for the Reading Race Assemblies and for entries to the races themselves. In 1796 John Frankum was the publican, followed by John Davis, who rebuilt the inn, passing it to Mary Davis in 1827. In 1900 the pub was used as a staging post for time trials of motor cars run by the Automobile Club (later the RAC) and in 1903 it was reported as having a smoke room and tap room with stabling for two horses and six traps. The premises were then leased to the brewers Blandy, Hawkins and Co. It later became a tied house, owned by Courage and then sold to Greene King and then Outside Inns and in turn bought by a consortium with an emphasis on craft beers.

The present building appears to date from the mid-C19. It is likely that the pub was historically equipped with stabling, and historic maps depict a long, narrow building running along the western boundary of the pub’s long rear yard. This structure was removed sometime during the 1980s or 1990s.

Between 1899 and 1912, a two-storey extension was added to the east of the main elevation, in-filling most of the passage to the rear yard. The ground floor of the western half of the Castle Street elevation may also have been refaced or rebuilt at this time, with a large fixed window in the location of the original door. Three single-storey extensions, two with flat roofs and one with a mono-pitched roof, have been added to the rear of the building between the early and late C20, the rearmost of which spans the full width of the building plot.

The building appears to have remained in use as a public house since its reconstruction. In around 2015, the pub’s name was changed from 120 Castle Street to the Castle Tap.

Details

A public house, believed to have been rebuilt in the mid-C19 on the site of an earlier coaching house. Formerly listed as Horse and Jockey Public House, Castle Hill, Castle Street.

MATERIALS: the building is of red brick in Flemish bond with stucco cornice and plat band and glazed red brick to the door surrounds. The roof covering is slate.

PLAN: the building is on a roughly rectangular plan running north from Castle Hill, at the southern end of a long, narrow plot. The principal, two-storey portion of the building is L-shaped, with a rear projection running north from the main building along the western boundary of the plot. Later single-storey extensions have infilled the L-shape and extended the building’s footprint further back into the rear yard.

EXTERIOR: the primary elevation on Castle Street is two bays wide, the eastern bay of which is slightly recessed. The western ground-floor bay contains a large fixed window under a gauged brickwork flat arch while the eastern half contains two matching tall and narrow doorways. The doorways sit within and are separated by glazed brickwork pillars. Each doorway consists of a half-glazed two-panelled door, above which is a fanlight with etched glazing followed by a moulded and rendered architrave, and a further rectangular fanlight containing etched glazing above that. The doorways sit under flat arches in gauged brickwork. The first floor contains two six-over-six sash windows with horns, set within large rectangular recesses with gauged brickwork flat arches. A plat band runs just beneath the first-floor sills and continues onto the eastern elevation of the building. A broad cornice projects from the southern elevation which, like the plat band, matches that of the neighbouring property at 122 Castle Street.

The building has been extended to the rear on three occasions. The northernmost of these, adjoining the older, red-brick part of the pub, is flat-roofed, while the two southern extensions, which are of different phases, span the width of the plot. The eastern of the two appears to be earlier and is of red brick with a rendered bottom half and a mono-pitched roof sloping north. The south-western extension is of late C20 or early C21 and has a flat roof. The rear yard is paved.

Legacy

The contents of this record have been generated from a legacy data system.

Legacy System number:

38824

Legacy System:

LBS

Sources

Books and journals
Dearing, John, Cliffe, David, Williams, Evelyn, Abbot Cook to Zero Degrees, (2021), 55-57

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