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10. The Cedar Tree Hotel
(Grade 2 listed 1-5-1951)

The 'listing' description is “Regency, the core
probably 18th century,
stucco, 3-storey, 2 convex bays over two storeys with
sash windows
and
crowned with wrought-iron balconettes. Stuccoed cornice-hood
doorcase on
Tuscan columns, dentilled plaster eaves, slates.” Its role
as a hotel grew
from its former role as a restaurant and guesthouse
run by Miss Kathleen
Earl for nearly 30 years until her retirement in
1968. The following year
it opened as a hotel with a greatly improved
restaurant and the added Chetwynd Banqueting Suite to accommodate
over 200 people. A northern
extension was added to the front in 1980.
During the war it provided
accommodation for officers at RAF Hednesford15.
In earlier times, when a
private house behind a high roadside wall, it was
named Cedar Lodge. The
Earls of Shrewsbury acquired it in Victorian times, but sold it for £250
in 1938. The
landmark Cedar tree is subject to a tree preservation order
and may be over 200 years old.
11. Houses north of Cedar Tree

The substantial pair of Victorian 2-storey semi-detached houses with
hipped and
slated roofs, now used as an annexe to the Cedar Tree Hotel and
'modernised',
replaced a timber-framed house with diamond-paned leaded
windows, said have
been Elizabethan. Until 2000 the houses had front
garden walls with gate piers
surmounted by heavy stone caps prominently
inscribed with the original house
names Ivy Villa (south) and Rose Villa
(north). At the 1881 census Ivy Villa was
occupied by landscape artist H.W.
Henley who exhibited at the Royal Birmingham
Society of Artists between
1871-95 and whose name is on the 1880s oil painting
of Brereton Church,
donated to the church in 1989.
The house next door (No. 110), dating from before 1820, was double-fronted
and red brick until 2002 when it was clad in modern materials and its
central front door replaced by a window. The row of eight cottages behind
this house and at 90 degrees to the road has retained much of its original
mid-Victorian appearance giving it good group value. Its present name of
Church View replaced an earlier name of Malabar's Row.
12. The former Antiques Centre
(Brereton Mews)
This is composed of a range of 2-storey brick buildings dating from the
early
19th century. The front part was formerly a shop and house owned by
successive generations of Brereton's once prominent Bradbury family, who
ran the low-beamed shop as a grocery and general store until the early
1960s. Old photographs show the premises once had a good-sized front
garden and heavily patterned cast-iron wall-top front railings and gates,
but
the garden frontage was
entirely removed in 1971 for the A51 road widening
at which time the shop
was serving as Brereton's Post Office. The buildings
at right-angles to
the rear are the remains of one of two blocks of old cottages
once known
as Bradbury's Row, before that Phillip's Row (1861 census). They
were
incorporated into the old shop in the late 1970s to create a multi-roomed
antiques centre, and retain their
original features and appearance. The
premises are currently being converted to housing.
15- Married accommodation was in
Kingsley Wood Road. |