Spurgeon Cottage Spurgeon House

A house, now a pair of attached cottages, dating from the 18th century and altered in the 19th century. The building has a timber frame with a facade of gault brick in a Flemish bond pattern. Other areas are plastered and weatherboarded, and the roof is covered with handmade red tiles. The main range is a single span facing southeast, with axial stacks located to the left end and to the right of the centre. There are three adjacent rear wings; the left wing has a 20th-century stack at its gabled end, the right wing has a 20th-century stack at its hipped end, and the middle wing, originally hipped, was extended in the 19th century with an end stack and a 20th-century single-storey extension with weatherboarding and a roof of red and blue glazed pantiles. A single-storey lean-to extension with a slate roof is located to the left of the middle wing. The building is two storeys high. The ground floor has two mid-19th century splayed bay windows with sashes, one with 8-16-8 lights (number 71) and one altered to 2-2-2 lights (number 73), and one early 19th century sash window with 16 lights. The first floor has three similar sash windows with crown glass. There are two flush four-panel doors with simple architraves and moulded flat canopies on scrolled brackets, along with a central four-panel door in a segmental arch. A round ceramic plaque on number 71 commemorates Charles Haddon Spurgeon (1834-92), a Baptist preacher and philanthropist, who was born there. The right return of the main range is weatherboarded on the ground floor and plastered above; the right side of the right rear extension is weatherboarded. The main roof is hipped at the right end. The rear elevation of number 71 contains a 19th-century horizontal sash window with 12 lights on the first floor, and another on the left side of the middle rear wing. The building abuts number 69 High Street on the left.