47, 49 AND 51, QUEEN STREET

A timber-framed house, now converted into three separate dwellings, dating from the early 17th century with significant 19th-century extensions. The building is timber-framed, plastered and weatherboarded, roofed with handmade red plain tiles. The main front elevation faces south-east and consists of 4 bays with an axial chimney stack positioned between the first and second bays from the left end, and a 19th-century internal stack at the rear of the right bay. The building rises to 2 storeys with attics. Continuous ranges of 19th and early 20th-century extensions extend to the rear, partly constructed of red and yellow brick and roofed with slate, with a 20th-century conservatory added to the rear of the right extension. The division between numbers 49 and 51 runs through the axial stack, whilst number 47 comprises mainly the rear left extension but includes the western corner of the main range.

Number 49 features an early 19th-century sash window of 10+15 lights with handmade glass on each floor. Its entrance has a 6-panel door with flush bottom panels, fielded middle panels, and glazed top panels, surmounted by a simple gabled canopy on profiled brackets, approached by 3 stone steps. The left return elevation is weatherboarded. Number 51 has 2 19th and 20th-century casements on the ground floor and 3 on the first floor, with a similar door and doorcase and 2 stone steps.

The timber framing displays jowled posts, primary straight bracing, and chamfered axial beams with lamb's tongue tops. Plain joists of vertical section are mostly plastered to the soffits. The wallplates feature face-halved and bladed scarfs. The roof is constructed with clasped purlins. Original attic floors survive. However, some of the jowls have been altered—one cut to a square step, others reduced to minimal short curved jowls or removed entirely. The framing at the right end differs from the remainder, incorporating nailed studs, suggesting previous alteration, possibly from the demolition of an adjacent structure.

18th-century moulded plaster eaves coving survives. The building retains exceptional fireplaces dating to circa 1700, elaborately moulded in pine. The fireplace of number 49 is particularly notable, featuring a central painted panel bearing the inscription 'The houre runeth And time flieth as floure fadeth So man dieth Sic Transit Gloria mundi' in gold letters on an originally white ground, with symbolic emblems, though the paint and associated modern brickwork have since been removed. The fireplace is decorated with 2 carved amorini or black boys, swags, wreaths, and 2 lead flowers. Below is an early 18th-century wood-burning hearth with rounded rear splays and original internal plaster. The fireplace of number 51 is in similar style but has been sand-blasted and more extensively altered. It retains a pulvinated frieze, a carved cartouche, a 20th-century carved flower, and 2 lead flowers, though the 18th-century hearth has been removed, exposing the original early 17th-century hearth beneath.

Number 49 additionally preserves a blocked early glazed window featuring a diamond saddle bar, and a 17th-century 3-plank door originally painted in panels with floral devices. In the attic, plaster around the chimney bears traces of early painting and some 18th-century radially patterned pargetting. Number 51 contains an area of Victorian floor tiles and a Victorian cast iron grate on the first floor.

Number 51 has been extensively renovated around 1980, with much internal plaster stripped and woodwork sand-blasted. Number 49 remains substantially unaltered, except for modifications to the jowls as described.

The building is listed at Grade II* for the survival of early internal features of exceptionally high quality.