The Old Pack Horse is a
Grade II listed
In the United Kingdom, a listed building is a structure of particular architectural or historic interest deserving of special protection. Such buildings are placed on one of the four statutory lists maintained by Historic England in England, H ...
public house
A pub (short for public house) is in several countries a drinking establishment licensed to serve alcoholic drinks for consumption Licensing laws of the United Kingdom#On-licence, on the premises. The term first appeared in England in the ...
in a prominent position on the corner of
Chiswick High Road
Chiswick High Road is the principal shopping and dining street of Chiswick, a district in the west of London. It was part of the main Roman road running west out of London, and remained the main road until the 1950s when the A4 was built across ...
and Acton Lane in
Chiswick
Chiswick ( ) is a district in West London, split between the London Borough of Hounslow, London Boroughs of Hounslow and London Borough of Ealing, Ealing. It contains Hogarth's House, the former residence of the 18th-century English artist Wi ...
, London.
Architecture
The current structure was built in 1910
by the architect
Nowell Parr
Thomas Henry Nowell Parr Royal Institute of British Architects, FRIBA (1864 – 23 September 1933) was a British architect, best known for designing public houses, pubs in West London (sub-region), west London. Many of these were built while Pa ...
, the house architect of
Fuller, Smith & Turner
Fuller, Smith & Turner is a public limited company based in London, England, whose origins lie in Fuller's Brewery in Chiswick, West London. In 2019, it sold its brewing division, leaving it as a pub operator. The company's registered office is ...
, who ran the local brewery.
It is a red brick structure of three storeys, with decorative terracotta and coloured tiles. It has remained unaltered since its construction.
The building historian
Nikolaus Pevsner
Sir Nikolaus Bernhard Leon Pevsner (30 January 1902 – 18 August 1983) was a German-British art historian and architectural historian best known for his monumental 46-volume series of county-by-county guides, ''The Buildings of England'' (195 ...
writes that it has "plenty of jolly terracotta detail and bowed ground-floor windows".
The
English Heritage
English Heritage (officially the English Heritage Trust) is a charity that manages over 400 historic monuments, buildings and places. These include prehistoric sites, a battlefield, medieval castles, Roman forts, historic industrial sites, Lis ...
listing describes it as the "best preserved example of a public house by the Fuller, Smith and Turner house architect".
History
The first pub on this site, the "West Country Packhorse", was granted a licence in 1759. It was renamed as the "Lower Pack Horse" in 1790, and again to be the "Pack Horse" sometime before 1811. It was acquired by Fuller, Smith & Turner in 1808.
The Friends of Turnham Green cited the overshadowing of the pub in their successful objection to the development of the whole of the adjacent part of Chiswick High Road and area behind it in 2015. In 2024, the pub was extensively refurbished, reopening on 4 April.
Terracotta
Terracotta, also known as terra cotta or terra-cotta (; ; ), is a clay-based non-vitreous ceramic OED, "Terracotta""Terracotta" MFA Boston, "Cameo" database fired at relatively low temperatures. It is therefore a term used for earthenware obj ...
wall decoration with swags
File:Corner decoration of The Old Pack Horse, Chiswick.jpg, Terracotta corner decoration with golden griffin emblem
References
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Pubs in the London Borough of Hounslow
Grade II listed buildings in the London Borough of Hounslow
Grade II listed pubs in London
Buildings by Nowell Parr
Chiswick
Buildings and structures in Chiswick
Fuller's pubs