Images from a Building Recording of Murdoch's Diner, Tilehurst, Berkshire 2020
Bob Edwards, 2021. https://doi.org/10.5284/1088091. How to cite using this DOI
Data copyright © Bob Edwards unless otherwise stated
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
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Room 5
Dorset House
Church Street
Wimborne
BH21 1JH
Resource identifiers
- ADS Collection: 3906
- DOI:https://doi.org/10.5284/1088091
- How to cite using this DOI
Introduction
This collection comprises a report and site photographs from a building recording survey and watching brief of a former public house The Traveller's Friend, located on the north side of Bath Road within former hamlet of Calcot, west of Reading prior to its demolition. It was carried out October 2020.
Murdoch’s Diner is a former public house, The Traveller’s Friend, located on the north side of Bath Road within former hamlet of Calcot, west of Reading. A small cottage shown on the Tithe map is described in the apportionment as ‘cottage and garden’. By at least 1866 the property had become a public house, being referred to as ‘public house, and garden in Calcot, The Traveller’s Friend’ in a Land Tax redemption document.
At the core of the present building is a low two-storey block with a shallow pitched slate roof with a rather crudely rebuilt gable stack projecting from the face of the gable wall at the west end which probably dates from the early 19th century. The upper part of this elevation is tile-hung with machine-made tiles. The cottage was extended to the east in the late 19th century with a taller two-storey addition, the elevation facing the road effectively being a large canted bay with three windows to each level, one in each face of the bay. Further additions were made to the rear in the 20th century and a conservatory type structure was added to the west gable of the original cottage.
Internally, almost all the walls of the original cottage have been removed at ground floor level and no features of historic interest survive. At first floor level the original cottage has two rooms, one retaining a late 19th century cast iron fire surround.
