The Old Swan

The Old Swan is a house dating from the early 16th century, originally designed as an open hall house with two crosswings. The hall was floored over and a chimney was inserted in the late 16th century, and it functioned as an inn from around 1600 to 1909. The structure features a timber frame set on a black stucco sill, with plastered walls and weatherboarded ground floor at the northern end. It has steep old red tile roofs and includes attached single-storey outhouses at the rear, which are also timber framed and weatherboarded with steep tiled roofs.

This large, two-storey house with a cellar is built in an H-plan, facing east. The front has jettied upper floors with gables on each crosswing and a gabled dormer in the hall range, featuring 3-light flush casement windows in the gables and 2-light windows in the dormer. The ground floor has three small early 19th-century canted oriel windows. There are four-panel doors beside the southern wing and at the northern corner of the northern wing, the latter located next to a 19th-century shop window.

The original cross passage in the northern wing was altered when the chimney was built in the lower bay of the hall. The early 18th-century parlour fireplace blocked the passage left behind by the old chimney, and a staircase serving the cellar and upper floors required a rear lean-to passage for communication between the ends of the house. The hall consists of two equal bays with one almost flat tie-beam to the open truss, which retains remains of small curved braces. The roof features clasped purlins, and there is a moulded lintel above the late 16th-century open fireplace in the hall.