119-123, UPPER SPON STREET

COVENTRY SP 3279 SE UPPER SPON STREET (North Side) 3/456 Nos 119 to 123 (Consecutive)

II*

Range of houses. Late medieval (probably C15) with circa C16 to C20 alterations. Timber-framed, partly rendered and partly rebuilt in brick. Corrugated iron and plain tile roofs with gabled ends. Brick axial stacks.

Plan: 6-bay timber-frame divided into 4 single bay cottages and a double bay and right hand (east) end. Each cottage comprised a hall open at front and partitioned off at back to form an inner room or workshop with a pitched roofed chamber above jetted into the hall and with a cross-passage between the two rooms. Later alterations include insertion of stacks and floors in C16 and C17, occupation of right hand double bay house by public house and wings at rear of either end in C19.

2 storeys. Long irregular 7-window south front, centre 3 window bays rendered, outer bays brick, the left with raised eaves. Various small window openings and doorways boarded over. C20 shop fronts to left and right. Timber-framing exposed in left (west) gable end. Rendered at rear with gable-ended brick wings to right and left.

Interior: Timber framing intact in central bays but mostly rebuilt in brick in end bays. Roof has principal rafters and collars clasping purlins, queen-struts an tie-beams and windbraces. Roof raised over bays 1 and 2 but principle rafters remain. Bay 4 (No 122) is remarkably complete; has head beam to cross-passage partition and axial head-beam and partition to inner room with large square-section chamber joists with rounded ends jetted into hall and trimmer for ladder in N.E. corner of inner room. Bays 1 to 3 (Nos 119, 120 and 121) altered but retain evidence of identical form to bay 4; smoke-blackening from open hearth fire on partition between bays 2 and 3 and bay 2 has evidence of pitched-roof over chamber. Bay 4 has circa C16 inserted timber framed fireplace, built up in brick in circa C17. Bays 5 and 6 (Nos 123 and 124) although altered in circa C18-19 have evidence of 2 bay cross-passage plan and roof-=trusses survive.

Historical Note: In Middle Ages owned by Coventry Priory (Office of Treasurer) and described in Priory cartulary (1410-11) as 5 cottages and a message. In 1581 the property of Mercers' Guild of coventry who sold it in late C17, and by C19 it was recorded as 4 cottages and the Black Swan P.H.

Source: N.W. Alcock. Report for Coventry City Council.

Listing NGR: SP3258179057