Old portal

We have just had our cellar re-proofed to stop the damp.  It had the walls covered in a "cementitious" substance, followed with plaster and skim.  Before that happened we had the ceiling removed, only to find that some of the joists were rotten at the ends.

So the joists need repairs, and during the repairs we found the top of this old doorway; the inside is covered with that cementitious stuff, the outside is underground, covered with a flower bed.  But what must it have looked like in the old days, perhaps as an access to the beer storage of the old pub that is now our house?

It's intriguing, but not so intriguing that I'm going to remove the very expensive cementitiousness to explore further :-)