20, 21 and 22 Steep Hill

This group comprises a 15th-century hall house with 18th- and 19th-century alterations, together with an adjacent house of 18th century and earlier date.

Materials

The buildings are timber-framed on a rendered stone basement, with brick to the southern extension. The roofs are plain clay tile with brick chimney stacks, except the southern extension which has a brick stack and Roman tiles.

Plan

The complex has a T-shaped plan. A cross-wing runs east-west at the north end with the main entrance on its north side. The hall range runs southwards from the south side of this cross-wing and incorporates most of the adjoining building to the south. Irregular lean-to additions stand at the rear (west side) of the north-south range.

Exterior

The 15th-century hall house is close-studded timber framing with moulded mullioned and transomed timber windows. The principal entrance faces north in the solar cross-wing range. This two-bay, two-storey range has its upper floor jettied out under a pitched roof. The ground floor has the entrance to the right, with an ogee doorhead partly obscured by an 18th-century doorframe containing an 18th-century plank door. To the left stands a 19th-century canted bay window with hipped roof covered in fishscale tiles. The first floor has two moulded timber mullioned and transomed windows. The building is jettied on both sides, with moulded arched braces carrying a dragon beam, rising from a moulded springer on the corner post.

The eastern elevation facing Steep Hill shows two jettied storeys to the cross-wing, which has tension braces and jowled posts to the raised ground floor. A single jetty carries the two-storey timber-framed hall range over the rendered stone basement, which increases in height from north to south. The jetties are carried on moulded stone corbels at either end and arched braces for the bays between. The hall range has a mullioned and transomed hall window to the right bay, which is entirely close-studded. The left bay has close studding and a smaller but similar window to the lower floor, with wider studding and tension braces above the rail marking the floor division at the southern end of the range. The south end gable is visible above the roof of the adjoining building; this has later close studding replacing the earlier hipped roof.

The basement has a 19th-century shop window with dentilled cornice, flanked to the left by a half-glazed door and to the right by a 20th-century shop window and a pair of half-glazed doors. Further right are two small timber casements.

Attached at the southern end of the range is a two-storey, two-bay brick building (number 20 Steep Hill), with its ground floor running roughly level with the basement of the timber-framed range and following the falling ground to the south. The main elevation to Steep Hill has a refaced brick front with timber casement windows in segmental-arched openings at first-floor level in each bay. The ground floor has an entrance door to the far right against the party wall with number 21 Steep Hill, with a rectangular overlight. To its left stands a shop window with dentilled cornice similar to that in the basement of number 21 Steep Hill. The ground-floor left-hand bay is now part of number 19 Steep Hill (separately listed at Grade II). The roof is covered in plain clay tile.

The rear (western) elevations are irregular, largely consisting of early 19th-century lean-to brewhouse additions which obscure the earlier elevations.

Interior

The timber-framed ranges rise through basement and two storeys. The northern end of the basement, under the cross-wing, has been gutted and its ceiling removed, leaving the room open to the ground floor of the wing. A suspended timber corridor, matchboarded and probably added in the late 19th or early 20th century, gives access from the street entrance at the north end, running back over the former basement area. This area houses the lowest stage of the large chimney stack inserted around 1600, which runs through the full height of the building, sited within the former hall and backing onto the rooms in the cross-wing. The face into the northern cross-wing room has a plain stone fire surround with segmental-arched opening and a wide iron hob-grate with some inserted Delft tiles. This is topped by an imported carved lintel with cusped tracery dating from the mid 14th century. The southernmost room is divided from the rest of the basement level by a partition wall with an arch-braced beam. The former external wall between number 21 Steep Hill and the later building to the south (number 20 Steep Hill) has been breached to give access between the buildings; the wall is very thick and constructed from large squared stone blocks. The floor is covered in plain red tiles. Three later steps lead down into the ground floor of number 20 Steep Hill. At the rear of this range is attached the former brewhouse, an irregular lean-to addition with quarry-tiled floor and a short brick-built flight of steps leading back into the main range.

The first floor of the hall range houses the former open hall and an inner room, both now divided with later axial partitions. The hall has its large stack at the northern end with a late 19th- or early 20th-century fireplace and surround. The hall was formerly open to the roof but has since been ceiled over. The chamfered arch braces of the roof trusses are visible in the hall. One has a finely-carved head stop at its junction with the wall post. At the upper dais end of the room, the deeply-coved canopy survives across the full width of the former hall (now divided axially). This canopy, its timbers fixed to the south end hall truss, protected the family seated on the dais from soot particles from the open hearth. The partitioned part of the former hall at the rear of the building is a small room with a late 19th-century stair to the upper rooms and the continuation of the canopy of honour. The inner room, possibly formerly a buttery, is partially subdivided to allow a stair to rise from the adjoining room in number 20 Steep Hill. The room has a massive chamfered axial beam and a much later inserted stack against the south end wall with a 19th-century fire surround.

The space above the hall created by the insertion of the ceiling below was not intended for habitation, and as a result the smoke-blackened timbers of the central roof truss have survived. The roof is of crown-post type. At the southern end, a closed arch-braced collar-rafter truss rises above the front edge of the coved canopy below. The curved timber structure of the canopy survives almost unaltered, now contained within a narrow space by a later lath-and-plaster partition to the south dividing it from the former small solar above the inner room. This room, now ceiled, was formerly open to its roof with a hipped gable which was superseded by a 19th-century timber-framed gable currently extant, though the hipped roof timbers remain in situ. The timbers visible above the canopy show that the roof was formed from paired common rafters with collars and collar-purlin between the arch-braced trusses with slightly cambered tie beams.

The second-floor room in the cross-wing, now ceiled, has a heavy chamfered beam to the former open truss which retains its crown post, arch braces and tie beam. A 19th-century cast-iron fireplace is set in the rear of the stack inserted in the hall range behind.

Number 20 Steep Hill, which is open at its ground-floor level to the basement of numbers 21 and 22 Steep Hill, has a single room on the ground floor with exposed chamfered beams with run-out stops. The siting of the chamfer and stop may indicate that the building was originally timber-framed and jettied to the main elevation, though there is little remaining evidence to confirm this hypothesis. The remainder of the ground floor now forms part of the adjacent building, number 19 Steep Hill, which is separately listed. The first floor has a single room which oversails the portion of the ground floor which is now part of the adjacent building. The room has a 20th-century brick fireplace in the rear wall and a shallow cupboard with late 19th- or early 20th-century joinery which may have been constructed earlier. The roof dates in its entirety from about 1900, though there is a small portion of a possible earlier roof embedded in the rear wall, perhaps a remnant of an earlier timber-framed building; it includes parts of a tie beam, rafter and possibly a curved brace.