Ayletts, Cleminsons Charity Almshouses

Ayletts, Cleminsons Charity Almshouses are almshouses that were originally a large house with an extension, dating from the early 17th century and later. The building is timber framed and plastered, forming a long rectangular block. The southern half consists of a large house with unarticulated crosswings at each end, while the northern section is an extension. The roofs are covered with peg tiles, hipped at the southeast corner and returning to a gable at the rear. Behind the northern crosswing, there is a lower two-storey kitchen extension block of similar age, also with a gabled peg tile roof. The roofline slopes down slightly to this lower extension. The rear features numerous lean-tos and a tall stack on the ridge line of the northern crosswing, which consists of two builds.

The front of the building has a lower floor made of 19th-century red brickwork and features four two-light 19th-century casements on the first floor. The ground floor windows are similar but have segmental arched brick heads. Number 2 has a shopfront-like arrangement with a central door flanked by two-light casements and a slate pentice roof on shaped brackets. At the west end, there is a single-storey extension with a monopitched roof leading up to a parapetted brick front.

Inside, the building reveals a high-quality integral floored house from around 1620, featuring a solar/parlour wing at the south end and a service wing at the north, along with the near-contemporary rear kitchen block. The structure of the wings is notable for having all the jowled posts in-line in the front range, while they are at right angles in the rear to support the gable tiebeams of the unarticulated ends.