23 Broad Street

23 Broad Street

A house of the 15th century, constructed of timber framing with later brickwork, mostly rendered and painted.

The building is rectangular in plan, comprising the historic building to the west and a modern extension to the east. It is continuously adjoined by a neighbouring building to the north and has a narrow yard to the south side.

The house is two storeys in height with a steeply pitched, gabled and plain-tiled roof. The west elevation facing Broad Street presents a gable to the street with plain barge boards. At ground-floor level there are two window openings: a modern frame to the left and an earlier 20th-century horizontal-sliding sash to the right. Above is a single central opening containing a 10 over 10 horned sash on a brick sill. The upper floor is set back from the ground floor and leans back from it. The façade breaks back to the left to meet the adjoining building, and to the right is adjoined by a brick boundary wall and taller modern brick piers of a vehicular gateway.

The south elevation is dominated by a substantial externally expressed brick stack towards the west end. The shaft is of red and brown brick, shouldered and coped on the east side with some tumbling in. It has been heightened with yellow brick in the 19th century. Below the shaft, the stack is rendered and painted and expands in two stages. A narrow flue has been added to the face, tapering to the base of the shaft. Between the stack and the Broad Street boundary wall is a small modern window opening. To the right of the stack at ground-floor level, the rendered wall extends for two window bays and a doorway to the junction of the historic building and the modern extension; the window frames and door are modern. At upper-floor level beneath the eaves, a reused timber with empty mortices on the face forms the wall plate between the stack and the end of the historic building. One window bay is rendered while the remainder of the historic walling is formed of a timber-framed panel with orange and yellow brick nogging laid to courses in stretcher bond, sitting on a rail at first-floor level. The framing contains a single-light transom-opening modern window. The end of the framing marks the east end of the historic fabric and the junction with the modern extension. The modern extension roof is lower than the east gable of the historic east end, which rises marginally above the modern roof and appears rendered with a plain barge board. The modern extension is a single-storey cement-rendered and painted building with attic rooms and roof lights.

Internally, the historic building forms two rooms on the ground floor: a main room at the west end and a stair and entrance lobby. The lobby is divided from the modern extension by a modern brick wall forming an entrance screen or baffle for part way across the building, leaving a doorway at the north end. This marks at ground-floor level the east end of the historic fabric. Against the north side of the lobby, a modern wooden stick baluster staircase rises westwards to the first floor. Entrance to the main west room is via a 15th-century doorway with cyma-moulded jambs and a four-centred arched head with sunk spandrels. The doorway was set within a post and panel screen which survives on the north side but appears to have been lost on the south, though fragments may survive behind the modern surface. The doors themselves appear to be two-panel 18th-century doors altered to fit, carried on earlier forged strap hinges. The west-end room has a stone fireplace with a substantial timber bressemer on the south side and a bridging beam with a stopped broad chamfer, which sits on a modern brick pier at the north end. The joists are relatively light.

To the east of the modern brick screen, the building is modern, erected in the 1970s, with no fabric of earlier date.

On the first floor there is much more visible timber framing. The stairs rise to a landing from which access is gained to a bathroom along the south side of the house. From the landing, it is not possible to go through to the modern extension; access to the first floor of the modern extension is by a separate stair at the east end. The east end of the landing and bathroom marks the east end of the surviving historic fabric, comprising a section of timber framing with a waney angled brace. This framing adjoins the upper-floor section on the south side, visible externally at first-floor level but concealed internally by plasterwork, together forming the south-east corner of the timber frame. The north wall of the frame at this level may survive intact and is seen to be complete for the length of the west-end bedroom and extends part way along the landing to the top of the stairs. Substantial posts with down-swinging braces are pegged to the plate above. Towards the west end there appears to be a blocked window with empty square-set mortices in the sill, probably for mullions. The stud forming the west jamb of the window appears to be bird-mouthed over the plate above, which may indicate a repair or secondary insertion. The wall plate is the only visible timber element of the west wall, and the framing beneath may have been removed, though a number of in-situ pegs and the marked inward lean of this wall might suggest it remains timber-framed. In the roof, the gable is seen to be of brick. A fireplace on the south side, above the main fireplace below and vented via the large south-side stack, remains open with a timber bressemer. The ceiling in this room has been raised and the beams reordered.

Above is a 15th-century crown-post roof with three surviving posts, one against the west wall. The most clearly visible post, roughly central, is octagonal with a moulded corbel from which braces rise to the collar purlin. The collar purlin and its collars survive largely intact, except for a lost section above the loft hatch. The rafters appear original, but two ranks of fairly crude side purlins and the fact that the collars are neither braced nor appear to be set into the rafters indicate some reworking of the roof, which might be expected if the tie-beam level has been raised.