NUMBERS 169 (SHEPHERDS) , 171 (RUSKIN) AND 173 (WELLS COTTAGE)

Numbers 169 (Shepherds), 171 (Ruskin) and 173 (Wells Cottage) are a group of houses, now three separate cottages, dating back to the 15th century, with alterations in the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries. The building is timber-framed and plastered, with a roof of handmade red plain tiles. It originally comprised a two-bay hall range facing southeast, with 19th-century stacks at the rear, and a two-bay crosswing to the left, also with 19th-century external stacks and an 18th-century one-bay extension to the rear. An early 19th-century parallel wing was added to the left, with the rear part of the upper storey supported by cast iron stanchions.

Number 169 includes the majority of the left crosswing, extensions to the rear, and the parallel wing to the left. Number 171 occupies the left bay of the hall range and a portion of the left crosswing, while Number 173 includes the right bay of the hall range. Number 169 juts out towards the street, featuring an early 19th-century splayed bay window with 16-20-16 lights on the ground floor, and a sash window above filled with 3 + 6 panes of glass. A similar sash window sits on the first floor of the left wing, alongside a six-panel door. Numbers 171 and 173 each have a 12-light sash window on the ground floor, a 3 + 6 light sash window on the first floor, and a six-panel door set within an early 19th-century doorcase featuring paterae and a shallow canopy.

Number 169 has an early 18th-century sash window of 12 lights at the rear. Inside the left wing, an early 19th-century staircase features turned newels, stick balusters and an oval-section handrail. The 15th-century crosswing retains edge-halved and bridled scarf joints in the wallplates, a binding beam, and a cambered tiebeam, which are now boxed in. The roof has a complete crownpost structure, with a square crownpost and four-way rising braces. On the ground floor there are two 18th-century two-panel pine doors, and an early 18th-century half-glazed door with one lower panel, four lights (two panes of bullseye glass), and ovolo glazing bars, which opens into the rear extension. The first floor of this extension contains an 18th-century barrel-back cupboard with profiled shelves, a plain-headed door, and a “borrowed light” window with 16 leaded rectangular panes of old glass. The hall range interior has plastered walls, ovolo-moulded transverse beams, boxed axial beams, rebated hardwood floorboards, and a clasped purlin roof. The original structure is unclear– whether it represents a medieval hall with rebuilt walls or a complete early 17th-century reconstruction– though a rebuild is considered more probable. The rear extension of Number 173 has an 18th/early 19th-century six-panel door with bullseye glass in the upper two panels, partially painted over.