123 AND 125, HIGH STREET

This early 19th-century house, now a shop, has earlier origins. It is located on the north-east side of High Street in Maldon. The building is timber-framed and faced with red Flemish-bond brick, with a plain tile roof. It is continuous with the adjacent building at number 121. The roofline features stacks over flank walls.

The two-storey, three-window front has a plain, low parapet. The first floor has a 16-pane sash window on either side of a 12-pane sash, all with painted segmental arches. The ground floor features a central Doric porch with unfluted columns that have moulded stone bases and a frieze of linear interlace. The door has a glazed panel over two moulded panels and a reeded architrave; a semicircular fanlight has been obscured by the porch. A cast-iron boot scraper is located next to the eastern column. Number 123 has a canted bay window with plate glass and a moulded cornice. Number 125 has an early 20th-century shop front with a fascia, blind box, one large glass pane, and a recessed glazed door.

A two-storey right-angled extension adjoins number 125 to the rear, followed by two further two-storeyed extensions, one with plain tiles and one with pantiles, each with differing ridge heights. The exposed south-east flank includes, on the ground floor, a plain tripartite sash window, a cross-casement window, and a two-light casement; the first floor has a two-light casement. A single-storey extension with a pantile roof is also located to the rear.

Behind number 123 is a tall, two-storey, mid-19th-century red-brick extension with a slate pyramid roof and a 12-pane sash window. A 20th-century extension abuts this.

The interior originally comprised two separate structures, refronted as one in the early 19th century. Number 125 retains one exposed and chamfered bridging joist and corner post, likely dating to the late 16th or early 17th century. The lower rear range has late 17th or early 18th-century timber-framing. The ground-floor rooms of number 123 feature reeded architraves with roundels where they intersect, one featuring a superimposed cornice. A tall rear room originally had an elaborate reeded cornice, now concealed by a suspended ceiling. The central dogleg staircase is characterised by column newels and stick balusters.