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WORCESTERSHIRE - Clent/Holy Cross, Bell & Cross National Inventory of Historic Pub Interiors Part One Holy Cross, Clent/Holy Cross, DY9 9QL Tel: 01562 730319 Email: mail@bellandcrossclent.co.uk Web site: www.bellandcrossclent.co.uk Listed Status: Grade II View this pub on a local map
A prominent painted brick building in the centre of the village and known to have been a pub for nearly 200 years. It has five rooms and, although there is a heavy emphasis on food nowadays, a good sense of a traditional, small village pub can still be recaptured. The central entrance leads to a quarry-tiled corridor that runs to the rear - note the figure '2' on the inner door and the tiny hatch in the wall on the left which was probably for off sales. Off to the left is the small public bar with a figure '3' on the door. These numbers were a requirement of the licensing magistrates. This has a (possibly) Victorian counter, bar-back; also some old fixed seating and a brick fireplace (which might be either interwar or post-war).
On the right the corridor has a timber and glass full-height screen which curves off to the right and which forms the wall for a wonderful old room on the right which is complete apart from losing its door. This small space looks just as many thousands must have done up and down the land. Note the meat hooks in the ceiling. The fireplace again looks either inter- or post-war brick under a former inglenook. The original bench seating runs all around the room right up to the fireplace, which now has a modern fire in front of it.
There are only a handful of similar rooms or snugs formed of two or more high backed settles left in the whole of the UK. They can be found at the following Britain's Real Heritage Pubs – the Holly Bush, Mackeney, Derbyshire; Malt Shovel, Spondon, Derbyshire; Five Mile House, Duntisbourne Abbots, Gloucestershire; Green Dragon, Flaunden, Hertfordshire; Red Lion, Kenninghall, Norfolk; North Star, Steventon, Oxfordshire; Kings Head, Laxfield, Suffolk; Old White Beare, Norwood Green, West Yorkshire; and Red Lion, Llansannan, North West Wales.
The room beyond the partitioned one has a figure '6' on the door and is believed to have been the landlord's living room and in the past only occasionally brought into use. Opposite and behind the public bar is was what formerly the Gentlemen's Smoke Room - note the figure '4' on the door and bell pushes on the wall for table service. At the rear is a larger room created out of a former barn and which has the figures '17' on the door! These three rooms to the rear of the pub have been refitted in modern times and it is good to see the minor refurbishment carried out Nov 2007 retained the original layout and fittings.
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