64, High Street

64 High Street, Markyate

An inn, now a private house, dating from the late 16th century with major alterations and additions over subsequent centuries. The building underwent internal remodelling and gained an attic floor in the 18th century, and was refronted around 1820.

The structure is a large L-plan building of two storeys with cellar, built on a timber frame set on a high red brick sill. The ground floor is infilled with red brick, while the first floor displays exposed timber framing with painted or plastered brick panels to the rear and rear wing. A dark weatherboarded gable triangle projects at the rear of the wing. The front wall and parapet are stuccoed with deep channelled rustication. The roofs are steep and covered in old red tiles.

The east-facing front is symmetrical about a projecting bay containing a round-headed doorway accessed by four steps, with a small round-headed window above. On each side of this centre, there are two sash windows with plate glass on each floor. The rear elevation reveals a high red brick sill supporting the timber frame with bay-posts exposed to their full height. Red brick infill panels occupy the ground floor, with painted brick infill to the first floor between full-height studs. The two-bay, two-storey rear wing displays exposed timbers on both side walls and a tile-hung west gable triangle. A single-storey west extension extends from the end. Weatherboarded infill fills the gable at roof level of the front range where the original full-height stair tower has been reduced to a single-storey rear porch with cellar access through a floor flap. Windows are generally casements, except for a two-light ovolo-moulded casement on the upper floor of the rear wing.

A carriageway passes through the north end of the front range. A former stair turret once stood in the angle of the wings but has since been removed.

The interior reveals the front range to comprise four structural bays, the northern bay originally occupied by the carriageway and backing onto a large 17th-century chimney. This serves a substantial ground floor room featuring a sophisticated early 17th-century classical fireplace of Totternhoe stone, with a rectangular plaster conical hood, tapering stone pilasters, full entablature, moulded shelf and centre block, and an ovolo-moulded cross-beam. One square panel survives from a complete scheme of wall paintings, with traces visible on two other walls. The painted panel depicts a faun or satyr amid unusually free, large-scale scrolling with classical foliage and grotesques; the design was carried onto the beam and continued over timber studs. The work is executed in black on white with yellow and green background, formerly limewashed over, and dates to the late 16th century in style according to a report by E Clive Rouse in the records of the Royal Commission on Historical Monuments. Similar wall painting survives in situ on the central stud of the north end wall in the attic, showing stylised foliage in black on white with border and yellow flowers. Painted timbers said to be re-used as floor joists to the attic (now concealed) were probably inserted in the 18th century.

Below the painted ground floor panel is a small diamond-mullioned three-light oak window, originally intended as borrowed light for the former cellar stair. An 18th-century arched opening to the former stair exists on the rear wall, aligned with a now-blocked front door to the street.

The south front room has an ovolo-moulded cross-beam supporting chamfered axial beams running through the range, and a corner fireplace serving an 18th-century chimney inserted in the south-east corner.

The four-bay roof of the front range appears to continue northward into No. 62. The roof structure comprises clasped-purlin, collar and tie-beam trusses with long curved wind-braces. The two-bay rear wing served as kitchen and service spaces, containing a large internal chimney emerging to the south of the roof ridge. The chimney stack appears to have replaced a timber-framed original jointed to the framed south wall. The north jamb incorporates a re-used ceiling beam. Posts are jowled with long curved braces to the tie-beam and straight braces to the wall-plates. These braces meet at a junction just beyond the chimney, suggesting the west end is an extension. First-floor features include an 18th-century iron grate and two-panel ovolo-moulded doors with H hinges.

The main stair was moved in 1940 to Woodhill Park House nearby. The building was formerly known as The Swan.