CONTEXT English Heritage has received an application to list the Butchers' Arms and the associated buildings, including Brook Cottage. The Butchers’ Arms complex is within the proposed extension to the Abbotskerswell Conservation Area and has been identified in the Conservation Area Appraisal as making a positive contribution to the area.

HISTORY AND DESCRIPTION The Butchers' Arms is a late-C18 building which has had various uses including a bakery, C19 smithy and a public house. It has been suggested that the building may be the site of an earlier smithy, although no evidence has been supplied to show the existence of earlier building fabric. The applicant has claimed that some internal features survive, including a C19 bread oven and features relating to the C19 smithy. The Butchers' Arms appears on the late-C19 Ordnance Survey Map (1888) as a public house with an L-shaped footprint and an associated V-shaped range of buildings (including Brook Cottage) to the west. The early-C20 Ordnance Survey Map (1906) shows the complex and notes that it includes a smithy. The southern end of the pub is the oldest part building. It is one-and-a-half storeys, includes a rear cross wing, C19 casement windows and a large lateral rendered chimney stack, and may include the remains of the smithy. To the north is a two-storey, three-bay, section with a shallow pitched roof, and yellow-brick chimney stacks at either end. This end appears to largely date from the late-C19/ early-C20. The historic maps show that the building was altered to the north between 1906 and 1939, and has been subject to various single-storey additions to the north, south and west throughout the C20. Recent images of the building show that internally there are surviving exposed timber ceiling beams; however, there also appears to have been some rearrangement of internal partitions. The bar is a standard mid-C20 design.

The other buildings that form part of this complex include Brook Cottage, a three-bay, two-storey, late-C18/ early-C19 cottage, under a pitched slate roof with brick stacks at either end. It has sash windows and a rear C19 lean-to. It is attached to a single-storey range which been entirely recovered in modern slates and has been subject to various extensions.

DISCUSSION Based on the information provided by the applicant, and with reference to the Principles of Selection for Listing Buildings (March 2010) and to English Heritage's Listing Selection Guides, The Butchers’ Arms, Brook Cottage and the other associated buildings are not recommended for listing for the following principal reasons:

* Architectural interest: the current public house was extensively altered in the late-C19. The public house, the associated Brook Cottage and associated building lack distinction in form and detail, and are not of special architectural interest in the national context; * Intactness: the interior of the public house appears to have undergone some remodelling, including a more recent bar, which further detracts from its architectural interest. There has been no information supplied to suggest that the other building interiors are of sufficient decorative interest or intactness to raise their overall architectural interest; * Historic interest: although the Butchers’ Arms has had various uses, including as a smithy, bakery and public house, these are of local, rather than national, interest.

CONCLUSION Based on the information provided, the Butchers’ Arms, Brook Cottage and the related buildings are not of special interest in the national context and do not meet the criteria for designation. However, as an evolved complex of buildings on the south-east entrance to Abbotskerswell, they are of local interest and this is reflected by its inclusion in the proposed extension to the Abbotskerswell Conservation Area.