21, High Street

SAFFRON WALDEN

TL5338 HIGH STREET 669-1/1/191 (West side) 29/08/69 No.21

GV II*

Shops and flat. Late C16 and C17. Timber-framed and rendered with gabled plain tile roofs. 2 storeys with attics and cellars. Front has 2 C20 gabled dormers with small panes. Painted timber moulded parapet cornice. 2 small paned tripartite double-hung sash windows on first floor with heavy moulded horizontal plaster panels, the best example of C17 work of its kind in Essex. Full width C19 shopfront with fascia, consoles and reeded end-pilasters. Door to flat via passage has 2 large moulded panels and horizontal fanlight over. 3 separate shop windows, one part of a former canted bay window with double-hung sashes each with one vertical glazing bar. Recessed entrance serves 2 shop units. Rear elevation has 2 gables, one to S a wide stair tower. Very large and complex stack to rear of N gable. Long 2-storey rear wing with gabled plain tile roof, large stack through roof and some old leaded light casements and horizontally sliding windows. Various lean-to roofs over stairs. Long Cl9 and C20 single storey rear wing of painted brick to W. Front range is a late C16 merchant's house of high quality framing with 2 unequal bays, formerly jettied. The larger (solar parlour) N bay has a roll moulded spine beam and rear wall stack with canted sides and mantel beam with leaf stops. Each bay formerly had a front wall with oriel and flanking frieze window with moulded mullions with rebate for glazing. Bracing is internal and markedly cranked. Cross partition has evidence for door head against rear wall. Roof of 4 equal bays with side purlins and arched windbracing (removed). Numerous old doors and fragments of panelling. To the rear is a 2-storey Cl6 wing with stack back-to-back with rear wall stack and panel of herringbone brickwork within inglenook. Floor joists have soffit tenons and diminished haunches and traces of stair opening. To the rear of this is a further bay of framing, possibly earlier. Flint and rubble lined cellar, now part of restaurant with base of main stack and storage niches. Part of front wall is in old red brick. Margin glazed and coloured glass of early C19 in borrowed-light window in rear.

Listing NGR: TL5367738497