Numbers 20 And 20A Baldock Street

The building at Numbers 20 and 20A Baldock Street is a house, now used as ground floor shops with offices above. It likely dates to the 15th or 16th century, with additions and heightening in the 17th century, and subsequent alterations in the 18th, 19th, and 20th centuries. The front is timber-framed and covered with stucco. It has a modern sandfaced tiled roof and a red brick chimneystack with projecting bands, dentils, and oversailing courses that are shared with the adjacent building at Number 22.

The first floor has two early 19th-century sash windows of different sizes, set flush with exposed window boxes and architrave surrounds. There is a deep overhanging eaves cornice with a plain soffit, and moulding where it joins the wall. The ground floor has 19th-century shopfronts, which have been altered; the right-hand shopfront has a cornice and blind box supported by carved consoles. The south gable wall is rendered above a pebbledashed lower section.

To the rear, gabled outshoots were added in the 17th century and are timber-framed with pebbledashing and old tiled roofs. Historical records suggest the building was originally a late-medieval single-storey house, with a storeyed south bay and an open-hall north bay, featuring flush walls throughout. In the 17th century, the roof was raised to create two storeys and was subsequently rebuilt. Evidence of the original roof’s construction, including mortice voids within the principal rafters visible in the partition between the two principal first-floor rooms, indicates that it had clasped purlins and windbracing.