Bell, Castle Hedingham

Timber-framed 16th-century hall-house which includes the shop to the left, now leased out. Four rooms are now linked by a corridor running from the front door. First, on the right, is the public bar which, until 1967, was accessed by a door in the middle of the frontage which also gave on to a tiny off-sales and the saloon - you can still see the old door behind the servery. The simple, slatted-wood counter and bar back shelving are from 1967. Ale is served from casks on two wooden stillages behind the bar. Note the old crib board screwed to the top of a scrubbed table. Other features are the portion of old dado panelling, an internal window to the corridor and a brick fireplace from which the plaster was removed fairly recently.

To the left of the corridor is the parlour, incorporated into the pub in 1980; a glass-fronted section of wall displays the underlying watlle & daub construction. The corridor turns 90 degrees; a small room at the back, also fairly new to pub use, has part-timbered walls and a hatch to the bar opposite. Finally we come to the saloon where the fittings are also from the 1967 changes, as is the extension into the former kitchen pantry (hence the old meat hooks in the beams)

Accessed from stairs in the yard at the back is the superb barrel-ceilinged 'Long Room', believed to date from around 1790. This room, part of which sits above the saloon, has served many purposes from ballroom to courtroom to auction house and more recently a folk club and theatre. As assembly room for the local Conservatives, it also operated as a political and social arena and was the scene of a speech by Benjamin Disraeli, hence it being known as the Disraeli Room. It was refurbished in in 1980 and the superb moulding on the ceiling is a plaster replica from that time of the papier-mache original. Assembly rooms like this were once a common feature of coaching inns; most had a partition or movable doors enabling the space to be divided and the Bell's retains such a feature - and hence the fireplaces either end of the room.

To the left is a plain room with a few timbers and a glass-fronted section displaying the underlying wattle and daub construction. The corridor then turns 90 degrees and there’s a small, room at the rear with part timbered walls and a hatch to the bar opposite it. The smoke room on the right has a counter and bar back shelves at least 40 years old; the room was extended to the rear in c.1968. At the rear is a 17th- or 18th-century building with an upstairs room which was used as a court house. Now called the Disraeli Room it was refurbished in 1980 and has a plaster ceiling which is an exact replica of the original old Papier-Mache ceiling.