119-123, UPPER SPON STREET

A range of houses dating from the late medieval period, likely the 15th century, with alterations dating to around the 16th to 20th centuries. The building is timber-framed, with sections rendered and others rebuilt in brick. It has corrugated iron and plain tile roofs with gabled ends, and brick axial stacks.

The original plan comprised a 6-bay timber-frame divided into four single-bay cottages, plus a double-bay section and a right-hand (east) end. Each cottage initially featured a hall open at the front, partitioned at the rear to create an inner room or workshop, with a pitched-roofed chamber jetted into the hall. A cross-passage provided access between the two rooms. Later additions included the insertion of stacks and floors during the 16th and 17th centuries, the conversion of the right-hand double-bay house into a public house with rear wings added at either end in the 19th century.

The south front is long and irregular, featuring seven windows. The central three bays are rendered, while the outer bays are brick, with the left side having raised eaves. Various small window openings and doorways are boarded over, and there are 20th-century shop fronts at the left and right. Timber framing is exposed in the left (west) gable end. The rear is rendered with gable-ended brick wings on both the right and left sides.

The interior timber framing remains intact in the central bays, although the end bays are largely rebuilt in brick. The roof retains principal rafters, collars clasping purlins, queen-struts, tie-beams, and windbraces. The roof was raised over bays 1 and 2, but the principal rafters remain. Bay 4 (number 122) stands out as remarkably complete, exhibiting a head beam to the cross-passage partition, an axial head-beam and partition to the inner room, large square-section chamber joists with rounded ends jetted into the hall, and a trimmer for a ladder in the northeast corner of the inner room. Bays 1 to 3 (numbers 119, 120, and 121) have been altered but show evidence of a similar design to bay 4; smoke-blackening indicates a former open hearth fire in the partition between bays 2 and 3, and bay 2 retains elements of a pitched roof over the chamber. Bay 4 contains a circa 16th-century timber-framed fireplace later built up in brick in the 17th century. Bays 5 and 6 (numbers 123 and 124), although altered in the 18th and 19th centuries, still show evidence of a 2-bay cross-passage plan, and original roof trusses survive.

Historically, the property was owned by Coventry Priory (Office of Treasurer) during the Middle Ages and was described in the Priory cartulary (1410-11) as five cottages and a messuage (a house with surrounding land). In 1581, it belonged to the Mercers’ Guild of Coventry, who sold it in the late 17th century. By the 19th century, it was recorded as four cottages and the Black Swan public house.