Queen's Head, Cranford

The Queens Head was rebuilt by Fullers about 1931 in a loosely Neo-Tudor style with red brick and some half-timbering. This was a high-quality job and the interior is very little altered, making it one of the best survivors of its time. It consists of three main parts with the public bar on the left, separated from the saloon on the right by the servery. Then, at the rear on the right, is a third room with a tall open timber roof and which aims to give a sense of an old baronial hall. The only significant change to the public spaces has been the creation of a connection between the public bar and saloon at the front of the pub.

The public bar has half-height fielded panelling, exposed timbering and brickwork above, and a fireplace of exposed brickwork. The gentlemen’s and ladies’ lavatories either side of the fireplace have their original entrance doors, with vertical grooving, and what may well be original copper-plate signage. All toilets were updated with modern sanitaryware in the 2015 refit.

The saloon is of a comparable size and style, although the fireplace is somewhat grander and is set within an inglenook, with narrow fixed benches to either side. The counter is larger than that in the public bar: as with the latter, the glass shelf or gantry is a modern insertion, in this case set on coupled square piers. The gents' lavatories have their original door, with vertical grooving.

Off the saloon is a small passage – lined with fielded panelling, but an open window Kitchen is now accessed from this point – leading to a large room which is the principal component of the pub’s south wing. This rises up to the wing’s pitched roof, and has an exposed timber ceiling of Tudor inspiration. It is named the saloon lounge on the plans of 1977. It has an original fireplace with a curved brick hearth, the half-height fielded panelling is largely original. At the rear of the saloon lounge is a small area, originally a store, which was brought into pub use in c.1977, which is the date of panelling and false timber joists. Lots of original oak doors.

The original Queens Head dates back to 1604 and purports to be the first pub in England to be granted a spirits licence (a piece of imaginative thinking, one suspects!).