14 14A 16, BALDOCK STREET

This property, comprising numbers 14, 14A, and 16 Baldock Street, is a house, possibly originally a historic inn, and now offices. It dates to the 16th and 17th centuries, with alterations and extensions in the 18th, 19th, and 20th centuries. The front is timber-framed with colourwashed brick above a stucco plinth, and features an old tiled roof with a partial wood modillion cornice remaining at the left end above number 14.

The exterior has two storeys. The first floor has five flush-set mullion and transom pattern windows. The ground floor has a modern shopfront at the left (number 16). A door to number 14, dating to the 18th century, has two large recessed flush panels, a raised moulded surround, and is set in a panelled reveal with an architrave surround and an open pediment hood on consoles above a blank fanlight. There are three 20th-century plate glass ground floor windows under segmental relieving arches with molded keystones. A plat band runs at the first floor level. The rear exhibits a complex pattern of projecting sections around an irregular courtyard. Number 14 includes a rear wing, timber-framed and plastered, with modern casement windows and an old tiled roof, running along the southern boundary and returning as a barn or stabling area along the east boundary. The property was altered and converted to office use in the 1970s. Number 16 features a three-story 19th-century rendered brick projection with concrete tile and Welsh slate roofs. At the far rear is a curved, single-story projection in yellow-grey Hitch Patent brickwork, likely dating to around 1840, which may have originally served as a privy or urinal.

The interior of number 14 reveals exposed late 16th-century moulded binding beams and bearers in the ceiling of the large front right-hand room. This room also has a brick fireplace with a chamfered Tudor arch. A mid-18th-century close string dog-leg newel staircase, with column-on-vase turned balusters and a moulded handrail, provides access from the ground to the first floor from the south rear outshoot. The first floor east room adjacent to the landing boasts an 18th-century fireplace surround with bolection moulding. The 18th-century outshoot’s date corresponds to the widening of the street range to form corridors. Historical records suggest the original complex may have functioned as an inn, alongside number 18. The property appears to have been divided into separate ownerships in the mid-19th century, coinciding with the rebuilding of number 18.