Description: Rock Cellars below the Elephant & Castle Inn. The holes at the base of the wall are ventilation holes to the lower cellar. This Inn, now closed, has very little architecturally to commend it. It's brickwork, revealed in the arched roof of the stairway to the cellars, is of the size and bond in common use during the 17th century. The house is of little interest. Plastered stuccoed front, small low ceilinged rooms, ceilings raftered, and in the lower rooms tiled floors. The upper storey has plaster floors, what is more commonly known as lime concrete. The stairs are of oak, shallow treads but not very secure. At the head of the staircase are two portions of the wall panelled in plaster and rough hewn timber, apparently part of the original inner structure. Windows heavily barred, fireplaces and doors, modern. Steps of brick lead down to the cellars, which are hewn out of the sandstone. In the wall of the stairway is a small wine cellar with an iron wine safe, undated, let into the wall. The first cellar, roughly circular in shape, is about 20ft below street level, and thirty feet in diameter by eight feet high. A bench of rock eighteen ins. high by three feet broad runs round the wall of this cellar. Near the floor level are the two ventilation holes to the lower cellar. The lower cellar is rectangular, 30ft long by 10ft broad and 8ft high. There is a rock bench down two sides and end, 18ins high by 3ft broad. This cellar is reputed to have been used as a cockpit. It is similar to the reputed cockpitat the Lion Hotel, Clumber Street. Outhouses at the rear of the premises, which are modern, contain brewhouse and malt rooms. The premises, at the time (1934) owned by the Co-operative Wholesale Society Ltd., were due to be demolished for the extension of the C W S warehouse. The Inn was probably built just after the Commonwealth, when a number of taverns and alehouses were opened in the town. It was given in the list of Inns for 1799 as being in the occupation of one Smedley. (notes by F Smith, 26-11-34)