21A And 23, High Street

Shops with domestic accommodation over, formerly commercial premises with domestic accommodation to the rear, located in Ely. The building dates from the late Medieval period with extensive recasting in the mid 18th century, and late 19th or early 20th century shop fronts. The number 23 shop front features modern arched glazing bars. Construction is of rendered brick with possible fragmentary survival of timber-framing to the rear, and a plain tiled roof. The building has an L-shaped plan comprising a street front range adjoined at the rear by a range running back down the plot. It adjoins numbers 21 and 25 High Street.

The building is two storeys in height with an additional attic storey in the front range. The pitched roof is gabled to the rear of the rear range, and features a large central brick stack in the rear range. The street front elevation has two shop fronts at ground floor level. Number 21a has large plate glass windows with a recessed door to the left. Number 23 has multiple panes with arched glazing bars and a twentieth-century door to the left. Above, the first floor is divided into three window bays containing early or mid 19th-century unhorned six-over-six sashes. Three square-headed dormers with modern casement windows light the attic storey. A modern single storey addition has been made to the west side of the rear range.

The roof structure of the rear range is formed of coupled rafters which may be 18th century in date but is probably earlier, perhaps contemporary with the stack, with some earlier re-used members and some later insertions. Doors at the upper level and at the first-floor level are mainly two-panelled and date from the 18th century. The winder stair up to the attic, with simple square newels and stick balusters, is probably 18th century in date. Timber framing may survive where the rear range adjoins the front range. A cross beam of the front range, exposed on the attic winder stair, has a broad chamfer and run-out stop that may be late medieval in date.

The first floor rooms of the front range were once panelled. A significant section survives on the front wall, raised and fielded with broad ovolo moulding, likely to be early or mid 18th century in date and certainly predating the sash windows, the low internal sills of which cut into the panelling. The rear range at first-floor level comprises two rooms divided by the large brick stack. The first room has a late 18th or early 19th-century cast iron grate which conceals an earlier fireplace within the brick stack. To the left of the fireplace a battened timber door has H hinges of circa 1700 date. The rear room has an axial beam carried at one end by the stack and presumably conceals a blocked fireplace beneath. The beam is substantial, chamfered and stopped, and is late medieval. Beside the stack a small winder stair leads up to an attic room. At ground floor level, a substantial axial beam survives to the rear of the main stack. To the front of the stack the rear and front ranges have been opened up and fitted out as modern commercial premises. A false ceiling conceals the ceiling above save for an 18th-century ovolo-moulded cross beam which probably marks the rear of the street-front range.

The property is close to the cathedral church, and the relationship between the High Street and the north side of the cathedral precinct indicates that the street dates from at least the rebuilding of the cathedral church by Abbot Simeon after the Norman Conquest. The historic core of the city was laid out much as it is today by 1416. The north side of the street, divided into burgage plots for rent in medieval times, potentially contains evidence of buildings of great antiquity. These burgage plots were of high status and most probably contained a mixture of commercial and domestic accommodation. By the time of the publication of Speed's map of Ely of 1610 the High Street was well developed. Drainage of the fens in the 17th century led to a period of prosperity, so that in the 17th and 18th centuries properties were erected and refurbished.

The building was in existence by the time of the 17th-century map. It is likely to have consisted of commercial premises on the street front with domestic accommodation in the range to the rear. Evidence in the building supports this, with the survival of a substantial late medieval brick stack in the rear range, heating rooms on each side of it. In the mid 18th century the building was substantially refurbished. The front range was reroofed, at the same time creating the attic rooms, and the whole building was completely refitted. At first floor level the front room was panelled and two-panel doors installed throughout. By the late 19th or early 20th century the shop fronts were created, that to number 23 perhaps being 19th century but altered with modern glazing bars. It may have been at this time that an alleyway between 21 and 23 High Street, which formerly gave access to the rear of the plot, was built into and the two separate units of 21a and 23 created. The roof was re-tiled in the early 21st century.