20, St John Street

No. 20 St John Street is a house, now used as an office, dating from around 1700 with additions from the mid 18th century and early 19th century. It is constructed of brick with plaster dressings and features a hipped tile roof with brick stacks. The building has a double-depth plan with side and rear wings and is designed in an early Georgian style.

It stands two storeys high with an attic and has a symmetrical four-window façade. The exterior includes a plaster plinth and a cornice at the top. The entrance is framed by an architrave and has a bracketed canopy above a four-fielded-panel door with two glazed panels. There are two basement lights, and the windows feature brick flat arches and cross-casements. The building has two gabled dormers with two-light casements.

On the left side, there is a small leaded light, a lateral stack, and a wing with a gabled first floor that has a cross-casement window above the carriageway. The right side features two brick platt bands and two stair windows flanked by additional windows, all with cross casements, some of which have leaded glazing. There are also two hipped dormers with two-light casements and an inserted entrance at the left end, along with a lateral stack and a rainwater head with a downspout.

The two-storey 18th-century wing has a platt band over the ground floor and three windows with 12-pane sashes on each floor, a coped gable end, and an end stack. The 19th-century wing includes a segmental-headed window on each floor, one small-paned casement, and a six-pane horned sash. The rear of the building has two gables and varied fenestration, including a tripartite sash window on the return of the wing. The rear of the side wing features a hipped roof over a sashed window.

Inside, the room to the left has an ovolo-moulded beam with run-out stops, while the adjacent room features early 18th-century panelling with a dado rail and a bolection-moulded fireplace with an overmantel that has egg-and-dart moulding and a scrolled relief frieze with drops. A similar room is located above. The dogleg staircase has turned balusters and square newels with finials and pendants, as well as a bolection-moulded dado. The first-floor room to the left contains an angle fireplace decorated with Delft tiles. This building is a well-preserved example of an early 18th-century town house.