Cooperative Stores

This is a house, now a shop, dating to around 1600 and 1700, with alterations in the 19th and 20th centuries. The building is timber framed with plaster, a painted brick facade in Flemish bond, and a roof of handmade red plain tiles. The main range, facing south-east, was built around 1700, with two rear stacks and a contemporary stair tower to the rear of the middle section. An adjacent wing to the rear left, dating to around 1600, projects to the left of the main range, with an end stack. A wing to the right of the stair tower, and adjacent to it, is of uncertain date. A single-storey extension with a slate roof was built around 1900 to the left of the main range. Later rear extensions are not of notable architectural or historical interest.

The building is two storeys and has attics, with an unusually high upper storey. A double shopfront of around 1900 features a central half-glazed door and a moulded fascia supported by four scrolled brackets. The first-floor facade has five original sash windows of 9+9 panes, with flat arches of gauged brick and crown glass. Carved modillions are present. The left extension includes two shop windows and a half-glazed door, accompanied by six plaster pilasters with elaborately ornamented capitals and a moulded fascia. The left return of the left rear wing has a first-floor window with 48 small panes, primarily of handmade glass, and a moulded wooden eaves cornice. A transomed two-light window with some leaded handmade glass, largely modern sheet glass, is visible in the rear elevation of the stair tower. The rear elevation of the right rear wing contains an 18th or early 19th-century sash window of 12 lights on the first floor, and another on the attic floor.

The original open-well stair from the first floor to the attic, dating to around 1700, features twist-turned balusters, square newels, and moulded close strings. A room occupying the whole first floor of the main range is fully lined with original bolection-moulded pine panelling, with two blocked fireplaces featuring bolection-moulded architraves, a moulded dado rail, and a cornice. Above the upper storey of the left rear wing is a chamfered axial oak beam with lamb's tongue and notch stops; the remaining structure is concealed. Loose in the attic are two 18th-century wrought iron casements with original leaded glass and a panel of leaded handmade glass made to fit an irregular window in the right return.

A Mechanics’ Institute was founded on the site by John Birkbeck in 1800. Two 18th-century wrought iron casements with original leaded glass are present, as well as a panel of leaded handmade glass.