69 And 71, High Street

The property at 69 and 71 High Street, Maldon, is a shop and town house dating back to the 16th century, with significant early 17th-century alterations. It is timber-framed and rendered, with gabled roofs. The building is composed of a three-bay range with extensive rear extensions, and includes two large gabled wings flanking a smaller central gabled bay. Behind the north-western pair of bays is a taller roof parallel to the street.

The north-west gabled wing features moulded bargeboards and a semicircular-headed 19th-century fixed window to the attic. The first floor incorporates a 19th-century canted bay window with sash windows, each with a central vertical glazing bar and a felted hipped roof. The ground floor has a 19th-century shop front with a canted-out fascia, canted sides, and a recessed entrance with large panes of glass covering approximately half the frontage. The central gable is smaller, with moulded bargeboards and a 19th-century casement fixed-light window in two parts, above and below the original tie beam. The ground floor features a canted flat-roofed bay with sash windows and one vertical glazing bar. The south-east gable also has moulded bargeboards and a semicircular-headed window to the attic, and is jettied on large ornamental brackets. A canted bay window sits under the jetty on the first floor, with sash windows featuring two vertical glazing bars. The first floor is also jettied on hewn posts with a moulded bressumer, incorporating two projecting joist ends with mouldings. A wide carriage arch on the ground floor has heavy curved arch braces and a 20th-century four-panel door within a moulded frame, leading up a flight of three steps.

On the rear, the carriage arch block is gabled, as is the central wing which projects further north. An attached black weatherboarded structure with a slate lean-to roof and 19th-century sash windows is attached to the first floor of the south-east wing. Behind the central block are two lean-to roofed structures of black weatherboarding, at right angles to each other, one with slate and the other with plain tiles. A large 20th-century flat-roofed extension and a slate gable-roofed rendered extension are located on the rear of the north-west wing.

The interior of the central block, the oldest part of the building, is a 16th-century cross-wing with an arch-braced side-purlin roof, formerly jettied to the front. The structure incorporates much reused timber and was enveloped in the early 17th century as part of a high-quality house, incorporating a contemporary carriage arch. The north-west wing originally had ovolo-frieze windows on either side of an oriel (recently renovated). The central wing exhibits internal wall bracing and was refitted with ovolo windows during the 17th-century remodeling. The south-east wing contains a central A-frame truss, side-purlin roof, straight wind braces, and long straight internal wall braces. The structure of the first-floor bay window incorporates ovolo mullions from a former oriel in that position. This wing also originally had small ovolo-mullioned windows on either side of the central oriel. Within these are a 19th-century cast-iron Art Nouveau fireplace and a boarded 17th-century door. The building represents a well-preserved example of a town house of the period, largely unrestored.