24, Church Street

Shop and house on a corner site with Museum Street. The building dates from the 15th century, with a late 16th-century rear addition, early 19th-century refronting, and 20th-century rear addition. It is timber-framed and plastered with a peg and clay tiled roof, comprising two storeys and a partial attic.

The plan forms an irregular rectangle of early L-shaped form with substantial infilling in the inner angle and slight extension to the north. The south elevation to Church Street has, to the west, a two-window range with sash windows with glazing bars of 4x4 panes. To the east on the first floor is a single early 19th-century window of similar type, with 19th-century gable barge-boards. The ground floor features a full-width 20th-century three-cant bay shop window set beneath an old jetty, with remnants of a 19th-century shop cornice visible but with cut-away angle shafts, the glazing bars measuring 4x4, 6x4, and 4x4 panes. At the east end, a boxed jetty projects.

The east elevation to Museum Street shows a long jettied run, cranked at three-quarters length around the street curve. The jetty is boxed but two principal binding joists project, and a building break is visible in the roof line at the cranked corner. The ground floor features, from south to north, the end of a 20th-century shop window, a 19th-century six-panel beaded door with an adjacent 4x4-paned sash window, a second similar 19th-century door with an adjacent 20th-century three-light casement window with rectangular leaded panes, and a similar two-light window towards the north end. The first floor has a central 20th-century top-opening two-light casement window. Windows at the north and south ends are blocked, with early 19th-century moulded architraves, though the glazing bars and panes are painted in. An 18th-century stack rises through the roof pitch south of the centre.

The rear north elevation shows irregular early 19th-century and 20th-century additions. The early L-plan is evident, but a whole second two-storey parallel range was added to the Church Street block in the early 19th century, with a large stack in the junction valley. A further 20th-century flat-roofed ground-floor addition with a two-storey narrow unit was added to the west wall of the Museum Street range. Two further 20th-century ground-floor flat-roofed extensions are attached to the north end gable wall. The windows are irregular: one early 19th-century sash window occurs in the contemporary addition, while the first floor and attic of the north end wall of the east block contain two windows of the same date—a 4x2-paned sliding sash and a 2x2-paned casement respectively. Other windows are all 20th-century casements, some with glazing bars, one with leaded panes. Two 20th-century plain doors are present, with a 20th-century back door featuring upper glazing with glazing bars of 2x3 panes above a lower panel.

Interior: The principal framing of the long jettied range to Museum Street includes a dragon beam to turn the jetty corner to Church Street with slender joists. The jetty of the main Museum Street run features late 16th-century diminished haunched soffit tenons with lamb's tongue chamfer stops. The building break visible from the street is not apparent in the joists. The junction of the Church and Market Street ranges has tension-braced studding. At this junction and at the south end of the Market Street range are three long splayed and under-squinted scarf joints approximately 0.90 metres long in the wall plates. Heavy studding with rear tension brace is also seen on the first floor at the west end in Church Street. A large fireplace opening occurs on the ground floor of the stack in the 19th-century addition.

Cellars run below all units, mainly 18th-century or early 19th-century brickwork with pink and yellow brick flooring. To the rear of Church Street, a cellar wall of early 17th-century small bricks contains two contemporary arched recesses. A stack on the ground floor at the north end of the Museum Street range is of late 17th-century brickwork and now has an attached wooden surround, restored but containing some early 17th-century decorated members.

The early date implied by the splayed scarf joints in the wall plates may indicate a 14th-century origin, followed by rebuilding in the later 16th century, hence the lack of a break in floor joisting of that time at an obvious building break visible in Museum Street. A similar splayed scarf joint occurs in the Sun Inn complex across the road, which is of 14th-century build.