Post Office

This is a house, now a post office, likely originating in the 17th century, with significant alterations and rebuilding in the 18th and 19th centuries. A rear addition was constructed between the late 18th and early 19th centuries. The building’s structure incorporates timber framing with mud-and-stud infill, largely concealed by later brickwork. The north extension is entirely brick built. All roofs are covered with pantiles.

The main range originally comprised three rooms, with visible timber framing of four bays and a central lobby entry. A shop front now occupies the room to the left. The front facing the street has a shop front with a recessed 20th-century half-glazed door and side light, beneath an original plain overlight. To the left of the shop front is a three-light window with a thin transom, set within a pilastered surround with a plain frieze, ornate carved consoles, a moulded cornice, and hood. Above, there are two attic windows; a 12-pane sash in a flush wooden architrave with a segmental stretcher arch, and an unsympathetic 20th-century window in a similar original opening. The front gable is stone and brick-coped and curvilinear.

The east front includes two windows. A blocked, original segmental-headed entrance is to the right of centre. A four-pane casement sits beneath a segmental arch to the left, with an inserted 20th-century door and blocked segmental-headed door. To the right, straight joints indicate the former position of wall posts, with an inserted 20th-century window beneath a timber lintel and another inserted 20th-century door. A pair of full raking dormer windows with 20th-century six-pane casements and rendered cheeks are also present. A rendered axial stack is in a T-shape.

The west side exhibits pair of oak wall posts (the bottom sections removed) and a mid-rail to the bay south of the chimney, along with a later four-pane casement, a blocked door and brick infilling below the rail, and weatherboarding over the mud-and-stud walling above. A 12-pane casement is to the left, with a straight joint to the right and exposed wall plate.

The north extension, a single-room, two-storied building now used as a sorting office, features an inserted wide door beneath a timber lintel, a casement to the left, a 12-pane first-floor sliding sash, a dentilled brick eaves cornice, tumbled-in brick to the raised gables, and a corniced end stack to the right.

Inside the main range, a large stack with an inglenook fireplace is to the left, featuring an arched, chamfered bressumer with a later 18th-19th century moulded cornice over. A chamfered spine beam is in the room to the right, and a boxed-in spine beam exists in the room to the left. Plaster floors are on the first floor. The roof structure comprises a four-bay pegged collared rafter roof with arched collars. This building is one of the earliest surviving vernacular buildings in the Isle of Axholme.