15, Townsend

No. 15 Townsend is an early 18th-century three-celled town house built on an existing medieval burgage plot. It is a rare and important survival of a side-entry L-plan town house type that is otherwise largely redundant.

The house is constructed of a timber frame with lath and plaster or brick infill, pebbledashed to the exterior. The late 19th-century south extension is of brick. The gabled roofs are clad with late 20th-century concrete tiles.

The plan follows a medieval L-shaped arrangement of three cells: a parlour to the west, a secondary living area in the centre, and a kitchen to the east. A second sitting room was added to the south in the late 19th century, and a sunk dairy was constructed behind it in the late 18th century.

The exterior presents one storey with a dormer attic. The blind gabled façade facing the street has never been pierced by openings, with two set-offs and an internal gable-end stack at the apex of the steeply-pitched gabled roof. To the south, the front cross wing was largely rebuilt in the late 19th century in brick under a steeply-pitched gabled roof with an external gable-end stack to the south and one top-hung casement. The north elevation has three two-light 20th-century casements to the ground floor and a glazed timber porch in front of a half-glazed door, with a steeply-pitched gabled roof featuring two gabled dormers fitted with two-light casements. The original east gable-end stack has been removed. The south elevation has been modified by the addition of a late 18th-century brick lean-to under a catslide roof containing the cellar and the original entrance from the side courtyard, now protected by a mid-20th-century timber and glass conservatory porch. The main roof above has one gabled dormer with a two-light casement.

Internally, the east-west range features an early 18th-century timber frame of thin scantling with brick infill to the outer walls and wattle and daub to the interior ones. A timber-framed corridor was created along the south side of the centre room in the late 18th century.

The west ground-floor room is dominated by a wide inglenook fireplace in the west wall with the original bressumer intact behind later boarding. To the south is a winder staircase leading directly to the room above, and to the north is a small recessed cupboard. The room has a pamment floor and a chamfered bridging beam with tongue stops. In the north-east corner is an early 18th-century timber corner display cupboard with raised and fielded lower doors on HL hinges.

The unheated centre room has been truncated by the insertion of a closed-well single-flight early 20th-century staircase within muntin and plank walls leading to the centre first-floor room. The timber-frame is evident, with a rough chamfered spine beam supported on a post at the east end. The east service room is entered through a plank door with strap pin hinges. The chamfered spine beam continues from the centre room with tongue stops at the east end. A wide east fire opening under a bressumer is fitted with a mid-19th-century cast-iron fire grate and register plate. The middle rail of the timber frame is evident in the south wall, beyond which lies the late 18th-century brick cellar approached by a flight of six brick steps from the south passage.

The first floor maintains an identical three-celled plan. The west room has a three-panelled raised and fielded door on HL hinges and a boarded fireplace in the west wall to the south of which opens the winder staircase, with a recessed cupboard to the north. It features chestnut floorboards throughout. The centre room has a stick balustrade to the staircase and was also unheated. The east room retains a late 18th-century cast-iron basket grate in the reduced fire opening. The roof structure comprises coupled rafters and a ridge piece, over which sits a late 20th-century softwood roof structure.

The house represents a direct replacement of a medieval L-plan town house with an entrance from the south side, following the manner of those found in King Street in King's Lynn (15th century) and in Winchester and York (14th century). In the early 18th century, Townsend was still divided into narrow medieval burgage plots. When this house was rebuilt, the constraints of the existing plot meant it had to be formed in the same manner as the original medieval building. In this way, the house is a survival of an older idiom rather than a revival for aesthetic reasons.