The Old House And Adjoining Front Block Of No 9/10

The Old House and the adjoining front block of No. 9/10 is a house, now divided into two houses, dating from the 16th century or earlier. A chimney was inserted in the mid-16th century, and the west bay and rear stair tower were added in the early 17th century, with alterations and a rear wing added in the 18th century. The building features an exposed timber frame with red brick infill and steep old red tile roofs. It is a large former open-hall house of two storeys facing north, with an underbuilt side-jetty along the roadside. The structure has five bays with a large internal chimney in the middle, a 1.5-storey rear wing at the eastern end, and a stair turret in the rear angle.

The front has three windows, with a bull-nosed joist end supporting the jetty. There is a rectangular, first-floor, ovolo-moulded, transomed, four-light early 17th-century oriel window with lattice leaded lights and iron opening lights. Below it is an 18th-century three-light leaded casement, and there is a plank door with a hood for the eastern part (No. 9/10). A blocked door is in a similar position on the northern part, before a catslide projection to the right. The west gabled end features a similar canted oriel from the 17th century on shaped brackets under a tiled pentice and a tile-hung gable triangle.

Inside, the building has deeply chamfered cross-beams, step-jowled posts, closely spaced studs, numbered joints, long curved braces, a knee-brace next to the chimney on the first floor, an unjowled stout post at mid-bay, and a clasped-purlin roof with collar-and-queen-strut trusses and curved wind-braces. There is a bread oven in a bulge from the main chimney with a salt hollow below. Large extensions linked to No. 9/10 are not of special interest.