31, Stonegate

This is a late 17th-century house, significantly altered in the late 18th century and mid-19th century, and now used as a shop and offices. The front is of orange brick in Flemish bond, with a painted render ground floor; the left return is of orange-red brick in English garden-wall bond, set on a chamfered brick plinth. The rear is rendered, and the roof is hipped, covered in pantiles with a timber cornice and brick stack.

The main facade is two windows wide and three stories high. It features a shopfront with an open passage entry beneath a flat lintel. The passage corner has curved glazed and sunk-panelled double doors leading to a three-light window with moulded mullions. The window is framed by plain pilasters with scrolled consoles and pendants at the head, beneath a full-width cornice decorated with composition rosettes, festoons and drops. The first and second-floor windows are 12-pane sash windows with flat arches of orange gauged brick, with painted sills on the first floor and painted sills on the second floor. A moulded eaves cornice runs along the top.

The left return, facing Coffee Yard, has a six-panel door with carved borders of anthemion and acanthus in an architrave enriched with flutes and rosettes, and a frieze of festoons and putti.

The cellar retains a fireplace with a mid-19th-century kitchen range. The ground-floor open-well staircase to the attic has a heavy moulded close string, bulbous balusters, square newels with attached half balusters and pendants, and a heavy moulded handrail with volutes at the foot. The first-floor landing includes a cupboard door of two raised and fielded panels with drawers below. The front room on this floor has window and door architraves richly decorated with composition mouldings including ribbon and flower, and fretwork enclosing rosettes. The fireplace has satyrs’ heads, vines and grapes on the jambs, a frieze of rinceaux with Bacchus in the centre panel, and moulded skirting with a dado rail enriched with flutes and paterae. A rear room has a six-panel door and a blocked bolection-moulded fireplace. The second floor has doors of two moulded panels in beaded architraves leading from the landing to both rooms. The front room features a boarded corner fireplace with a frieze of ribbons, festoons and paterae, and a moulded cornice shelf. The back room has a plain fireplace with a hob grate and a plank cupboard door. The attic retains two two-panel doors.

Historically, in the late 18th century, the house was owned by John and William Staveley, who were carvers and gilders.