| Description | Puzzle Hall Inn, Warley. Historic ale house originating as an early 17th century hall house.
'The Puzzle Hall Inn has nearly 400 years of history.....
The Puzzle Hall was built in 1628 and was a private dwelling for a hundred years or so until it became a public house. A brewery was established around 1895, which closed in 1935 when S. H. Ward and Company of Sheffield bought the pub.
Up to the 1950s, beer used to arrive by rail. The beer would be dropped off at Sowerby Bridge station and brought to the pub on a mechanical horse from where the Bridges public house is now. Before the war, the Puzzle Hall Inn used to have boats for hire. There’s a secret set of stairs down to the river under the courtyard. These boats were popular with young courting couples who could spend some time together, leaving their chaperones on the river bank'.
(http://www.puzzlehall.com/history of the puzzle hall inn/. Web site accessed 13/01/2014).
Puzzle Hall was the subject of an archaeological assessment by Peter Thornborrow (WYAS), c.1985 90. The photographic images produced by the assessment is held by WYAAS (Thornborrow, P.H. (WYAS). c.1985 90).
The images depict a building with a sprawling plan and mass of roof lines, vent lantern and chimneys with an eccentric 19th century appearance including a three storey square tower to the rear of the property (added in 1903 as a maltings), a single storey outshut with hipped roof attached to the north western elevation and a gabled two story wing to the south east. These are likely to be late 19th to early 20th century additions for brewing processes and to provide public house accommodation.
An earlier, probably 17th century building, is discernable however, subsumed by later development. The south eastern elevation is double gabled. The northern gable wall, which projects, contains flush chamfered mullion windows on the first floor indicating early origins. The ground floor has later sash windows which probably replaced earlier recessed chamfered mullion windows of a likely 17th century date. The stone work on this elevation is rougher and more irregular. There is a large internal chimney stack built into the northern wall against the single storey outshut. The roof of this wing, with sagging ridge purlin indicating antiquity, joins another roof at the same level which runs off at right angles giving an 'L' shaped plan. This latter roof disappear below the higher roof of the southern gabled wing.
It can be anticipated that a closer inspection of this building (particularly the roof timbers) would reveal other evidence of 17th century origins. Puzzle Hall Inn is of interest not only for its early origins but also because of its early commercial conversion to a beer house and later adaptation in the late 19th century as a brewery and pub. This bulding displays the evidence of its 400 years of continual use.
(Lunn, K. (WYAAS). 2014. Description of Puzzle Hall Inn based on photographic images. Description found in digital HER record only and not on file at WYAAS). |