18 And 20, Trooper Road

Nos. 18 and 20 Trooper Road is a house and barn, now two houses, dating from around 1500. It features an open hall house with a jettied southern block, a late 16th-century chimney at the junction of the blocks, and an inserted floor in the hall. There is a 17th-century fireplace in the hall and another in the barn at the northern end. The southern block has an early 18th-century brick front, and the barn has been heightened and floored. In the 19th century, the building was divided into three houses and a shop (Nos. 16, 18, 20, and 22), later combined in the late 20th century.

The structure has a timber frame on a brick sill in the northern part, with painted brick infill above a painted brick ground floor. The eastern front is made of plum brick with red brick dressings on the southern part, and the southern gable features red tile-hanging. The building has steep red tile roofs and is a long two-storey group facing east. The northern part (No. 18) has four windows and two plank doors in heavy frames. It features casement and swivel windows with segmental arches on the ground floor, and a two-flue external gable chimney from the 18th or 19th century.

The large internal chimney at the southern end is partly built into the former cross-passage of the original open hall, forming a lobby entrance. The southern part (No. 20) has a formal brick front with a floor band and two windows on each floor. The back features blue brick headers leading to a recess above the central door. The flush three-light casement windows have flat red brick gauged arches, and the ground floor right-hand window has a restored two-panel door.

Inside, the exposed framework indicates that the southern block was formerly jettied. A new central lobby was formed in the 18th century by cutting out a partition that separated the original two unheated rooms. The position of the stair, currently in the northern part, is likely on the site of the late 16th-century stair. Above the ground floor fireplace, there is a late 16th-century wall painting, horizontally divided, featuring a mirrored pattern of a large-scale formal symmetrical floral design. The 17th-century ground floor fireplace on the northern side of the stack, which was added or rebuilt at that time, has elaborate stops to the chamfered lintel, with the initials I H separated by a device, and the date '16?7' above.