42 and 42A, Church Street

Nos. 42 and 42A on Church Street is a house that was later used as an inn and is now divided into shops and a restaurant. It dates from the late 16th century, with later additions and alterations. The building is roughcast, concealing a timber frame, and has a slate roof. It has an H-plan shape with gables on either side of a central hall range.

The building has two storeys and features three windows on the first floor and one on the ground floor. The left gable has a late 19th-century five-light window with Gothic tracery and hoodmoulds above, and a four-light window below. There is a restored eight-light wooden mullioned and transomed window under the eaves of the hall range and a latticed casement window in the jettied right gable. A late 19th-century single-storey lean-to with a round-arched doorway is located to the right between the gables, along with a late 19th-century shop front on the right gable. A prominent reddish-brown brick axial stack is situated at the rear of the right gable, which also has a rebuilt internal stack on the side.

Inside, the right cross-wing features close studding with a long straight tension brace exposed on the left wall upstairs and herringbone decoration creating lozenge patterns on the right and front walls. There is also close studding on the front wall of the hall range, with wattle and daub infill behind glass in one of the panels of the right cross-wing, along with fragmentary square panelling visible downstairs. The right cross-wing has exposed roof trusses, with a single-purlin roof in two bays that includes a chimney bay at the far end, cambered collars with V-struts, and straight wind braces, as well as jowled wall posts. The hall range has a similar roof structure in two wide bays. The rooms in the left cross-wing were not inspected but are likely to be of interest as well.