12, Bridge Street

House at 12 Bridge Street, Saffron Walden

This is a timber-framed and plastered house with a peg and clay tiled roof, combining a late 16th-century core with an 18th-century street range, 19th-century additions, and 20th-century restoration. The building is T-shaped in plan, comprising an 18th-century principal block fronting the street with a pair of conjoined 16th-century wings projecting at the rear. It rises to two storeys with a partial attic and cellars.

The west-facing street elevation is four windows wide. All windows are sashes with moulded architraves and glazing bars in 4x4 panes. Ground floor features a single sash window to the north-south, a 19th-century house doorway with plain jambs, console brackets, an overlight and simple hood, and a 4-panelled door. A 19th-century shop window and adjacent shop door sit together under a common shallow hood and fascia board in similar style to the house door. The shop window has glazing bars with 4x2 large panes, while the shop door comprises 2 leaves with upper glazing (2x2 panes per leaf) and single lower panels. The entire facade is finished in 18th-century combed panel pargetting. The roof has half-hipped ends with large stacks visible behind the apex. At the south end, a 19th-century red brick slender stack rises through the roof.

The rear eastern elevation displays two conjoined gabled units, each with large red brick stacks at the apex. These were rebuilt in the 20th century but likely retained their original shape—the northern unit has a diagonal cruciform plan while the southern is irregular rectangular. Both gabled units share a central wall plate; other plates and purlins also project. The entire end wall is finished in 20th-century combed pargetting copying the street front pattern. Windows are irregular throughout, all early 20th-century casements. Ground floor features a 2-light casement window with glazing bars and 4x3 panes (north-south), a simple 19th-century boarded house back door with a lower flush panel and upper glazing (3x3 panes), and a 3-light casement window with 6x3 panes. First floor windows in the north unit comprise a 3-light casement (6x3 panes) and a 2-light casement (one with a clear single pane, one with rectangular leaded panes). The street block behind projects at both ends, particularly to the south where the roof drops over a simple boarded door and an 18th-century casement window, now partly removed. The attic in the street range contains a central gabled dormer window with a plain double casement.

The south end elevation features a half-hipped gabled end of the street range with a central exterior 19th-century slender stack and a catslide roof with a rear lean-to of 20th-century pargetting. Ground floor includes a 6-panelled door (upper panels now blocked, central ones glazed, lower ones recessed) and an early 20th-century casement window with 4x3 panes matching those on the rear elevation. Behind and to the east of the south rear unit is 20th-century weatherboarding with a 3x3-paned casement window on the ground floor and a 20th-century 2-light casement with 4x3 panes on the first floor. A large stack rises from the apex at the house-wing junction.

The north end elevation is finished entirely in plain rendering. The street range has a 20th-century 2-light casement attic window with 6x3 panes immediately below the roof half-hip. The rear wing has one ground floor 3-light metal casement window. A cruciform stack rises from the roof apex.

Interior timber framing is now mainly concealed, but ground floor rooms in the twin-gabled rear unit have exposed ceiling joists, closely set and flat-laid with lamb's tongue chamfer stops in the south room. A late 16th-century moulded red brick fireplace survives in this room in good condition, featuring a 4-centred arched head within rectangular framing with cyma and hollow chamfers, the moulding extending well down to the base of the jambs. Contemporary wainscot panelling now lines the lower walls around the shop area and includes a door of similar material in the north room of the street range. The roof of the street block is ceiled in, though framing of clasped side purlin type with slender members is partly visible. The front house door leads through a passage to the back door within the north rear block; the interior plan appears to combine a front 3-unit block with a rear central passage arrangement. The moulded brick fireplace likely occupied a rear heated parlour at the "high" end, with the north stack formerly serving kitchen use. The wainscot panelling, though of contemporary date with the house, appears to have been reset.