5, 7 and 9 Church Street

5, 7 and 9 Church Street

A 17th-century vernacular farmhouse that was subdivided and extended during the 19th century and further modified in the 20th and 21st centuries.

The building is constructed with a timber frame, externally rendered, with infill panels principally of lathe and daub but with some areas of brick or cement. It has brick chimney stacks and a pitched plain-tiled roof. The structure is one room deep plus extensions, with three principal rooms serving the ground, first and attic storeys. The original lobby-entry plan form can be determined from the position of the main entrance to number 5 and from the structural bays within the building.

The whole building has painted rendered wall surfaces, with some small areas of brickwork to the rear. The single-pile core and lobby-entry plan can be appreciated from the principal elevation, which runs parallel to Church Street. Each structural bay has a street-facing entrance door and sliding sash windows at ground and first floor. A shopfront extension to number 9 features a small tiled roof and a pair of canted bay windows. A single small dormer sits centrally within the steeply pitched plain-tiled roof. A large red-brick chimney stack rises through the ridge and stands between numbers 5 and 7.

The rear elevation includes a three-storey gabled stair compartment in a roughly central position with a water pump at its base. A narrower two-storey gabled extension stands at the east end, reducing to a single-storey projection along the garden boundary. These two projections are connected at ground floor beneath a cat-slide roof running all the way to the ridge. Sliding sash windows and some 20th-century hinged windows are irregularly placed around the rear elevation. The east elevation has a ground floor window, a pentice board, and a small attic window. The west elevation abuts the neighbouring property.

The timber frame is exposed throughout most of the interior and includes stop-chamfered beams in the ground and first floor rooms. Some vernacular fixtures survive, such as plank and batten doors. Evidence of a 17th-century architectural paint scheme can be found in several parts of the building and is likely to be original to the time of construction.

At ground floor level, the chimney breasts and fireplaces are notable features. These include back-to-back brick inglenooks in numbers 5 and 7, originally the parlour and hall respectively. They have timber lintels and their overmantles were constructed with reused 14th-century gothic stonework embedded in them. The fireplace in number 7 includes a built-in copper, likely to have been introduced when the building was subdivided in the 19th century. A blocked three-light rectangular ovolo-moulded 17th-century window with painted iron saddlebars is embedded in the western gable wall. 19th-century brick floors survive in the same room.

At first floor level, fireplaces with moulded stone surrounds survive in the rooms at numbers 5 and 7. That in number 5 has an 18th-century cast iron hourglass grate and a fire surround with moulded jambs that may have been reused from Buckden Palace, together with a stone overmantle with an ogee-moulded shelf. The exposed timber frame of the western gable wall at this level is particularly heavy and includes very broad down-braces and a small blocked window, perhaps predating the 17th century. The first floor room in number 7, the hall chamber, contains 17th-century painted scrollwork in the overmantle and some painted drop pendants on daub infill on the south wall.

The extent of the 17th-century architectural paint scheme is unknown, but fragments occur in the ground floor rooms of numbers 5 and 7 and in the first floor room of number 7. Elements of the scheme include grey-black painted timbers, decorative scrollwork, and pendants painted onto the infill between timbers.

Three staircases serve the building. The largest is a dog-leg stair contained within the upper two storeys of the projecting gabled compartment in the centre of the south elevation. At ground floor level this compartment contains a blocked window with a painted iron saddlebar similar to that in the west wall.