Governor'S House

The Governor's House, also known as the Harvest Bakery & Cafe, is a timber-framed house dating back to 1474, with a significant addition from the late 18th century and alterations in the early and late 19th and 20th centuries. It was restored and converted in 1987 by Guy St John Taylor Associates.

The front of the building is timber-framed with a rubble and brick underbuild and rendered nogging, finished with colourwashed brick, and has a pantile roof. The timber frame features close studding, coved jettied floors with billeted bressummers, coved eaves, and coped gables. Single external rear wall and gable stacks are present. The house is three stories tall with six bays, forming an L-plan. The front has three large early 19th-century glazing bar sashes on the upper floors, a 2-light glazing bar casement to the left, and two glazing bar fixed lights to the right. The ground floor now has two late 20th-century wooden shopfronts. The shopfront to the left has a central recess with a pair of glazed doors, flanked by single pane windows. The shopfront to the right features a segment-headed single pane window and an angled recess with a glazed door. Both shopfronts have leaded overlights. A close boarded entry door is located to the right.

The east side of the house has close studding and a glazed-in open gallery with wooden mullions, flanked by single 3-light windows. Above the gallery are two 2-light casements and a smaller single casement. The rear of the building, facing west, displays the upper two stages of a jettied turret with a moulded bressummer and decorated gable, along with a small glazing bar sash and a hatch above. A rear wing has a coved jettied second floor, featuring a single glazing bar sash, a single Yorkshire sash, and above, two Yorkshire sashes with 4 and 2 lights. The ground floor of the wing has a beaded 6-panel door with overlight, flanked to the left by a large glazing bar sash. A two-story 18th-century addition, to the south, features a 20th-century metal casement and a segment-headed door below.

The interior retains much of the original timber framing, including stud walls and arch braces on the first floor, with some retaining wall paintings. The second floor has plain stud walls. The roof structure is a principal rafter roof with single butt purlins, struts, and wind braces. The ground floor features plain span beams, some renewed, with one showcasing a figure-carved stone bracket. The first floor has chamfered span beams, and the rear wing has an exposed ceiling with moulded joists and a cambered span beam. A central ground-floor fireplace features a moulded cambered bressummer and jambs, with a similar bressummer on the first floor. The winder stairs, partly renewed, have a 15th-century garderobe on the first floor. Two doors are made of wall panelling. The building exemplifies the prevalence of timber framing in Newark before 1660 and served as the headquarters of the town governor during the sieges of 1643 and 1646.