54 54B, HIGH STREET

54 and 54B High Street is a house that may have originally been part of The French Horn Inn from the 17th century, now serving as commercial premises. The building dates from the 16th and 17th centuries and was altered and refurbished in 1980. It features a timber frame, is faced with stucco, and has an old tiled roof with one box dormer and a gable on the right.

The exterior consists of two storeys and attics. The first floor has three flush-set sash windows with divided glazing and exposed boxes. The attic gable on the right has one flush-set sash window with glazing bars. The ground floor has modern shopfronts; No. 54, on the right, has a 1980s arcaded timber shopfront with a recessed entrance door at the centre left. No. 54B features a mid-20th century timber-framed shopfront with plate glass display windows and a timber fascia, infilling a carriageway that once served the east side of the French Horn complex.

Internally, the ground floor has been gutted, and the structure is covered over. The first floor, opened up as office space in the 1980s, reveals exposed timber framing with close-set heavy studwork from the 16th and 17th centuries, along with curved windbracing and an inserted 17th-century chimneystack. On the south elevation of the first floor, there is a three-light window with moulded wooden mullions on the left, which is now plaster filled and not visible externally. The higher level of the first floor of No. 54B indicates the former location of the carriageway on the ground floor.