Hand & Heart, Peterborough

Situated in a small terrace, the Hand & Heart is a small, purpose-rebuilt public house dating from 1938. Of two storeys in plain brick, with a flat roof, it was built for Warwick & Richardson’s Brewery of Newark and is essentially intact and unaltered.

Sadly the two original front windows advertising 'Warwick's' have been replaced with similar, but not exact, copies in recent years. The front door on the left leads to a small lobby and, beyond an internal door in a full-height glazed screen, is the modest drinking lobby around the Jug Bar (off sales), both areas with black and white tiled flooring. A couple of bar stools confirms that this increasingly rare facility is in use here at times and the bell push to attract attention remains on the left. The screen in the drinking lobby can still be raised and lowered for service and the lower central panel is hinged and was used for transactions when this doubled as the off-sales, but is now permanently sealed, apparently at the insistence of 'Health & Safety'!. Note the number '2', a former requirement of the licensing magistrates, on the screen in the drinking lobby.

A door on the right just short of the serving hatch leads to the public bar where the fabric and fittings from the Thirties scheme have survived very well. The bar counter has a distinctive Art Deco frontage; to the left there is a door to the servery for staff which has a hatch and shelf for service; and the mirrored bar back has succumbed to only modest changes to allow the inclusion of a fridge. Also preserved is the original fitted seating. The only lost item is the fireplace, replaced by a brick one from the 1960/70s. Note the WWII memorial on the wall of the public bar – there are only 60 or so of these in pubs in the whole of the UK.

A door at the rear right corner of the drinking lobby, still with 'Smoke Room' and '3' painted on it, leads to a compact room which retains its full set of original fitted seating and a baffle by the door. Service to this room is via a hatch, which until the late 1990s had a door that could be opened and closed for service. The only other lost item is the original fireplace which has been replaced by one in an inappropriate Victorian style. Other doors in the drinking lobby lead to an 'inside' ladies toilet still with 'Ladies' painted on it, and to a passageway to the 'outside' gents (the exterior passageway to the gents' is now covered over). The passageway to the gents' has its own street entrance on the far left of the building.