The building follows a straightforward gable-ended form, four bays wide along its eastern front, with an off-centre doorway and chimney positioned toward the southern end. Nothing about its exterior announces what local knowledge reveals about its construction: the walls are partially mud-built, using a cavity wall technique in which the gap between the two skins of wall was packed with dried beech leaves. This was insulation of a thoroughly practical, entirely local kind, drawing on whatever the surrounding landscape could provide rather than on any imported or industrial material.

The main structure predates an addition tacked onto the southern end in the early twentieth century, which rises noticeably taller than the original body of the building, giving the roofline an uneven, slightly improvised appearance that reflects the way rural buildings were often extended incrementally as circumstances changed. At some point the premises ceased to function as a public house, the community gathering place it once would have been, and began its long retreat into disrepair. The mud-and-leaf walls, robust enough to have survived this long, are now slowly yielding to time and weather alongside the collapsing thatch above them.