53 55, HIGH STREET

Nos. 53 and 55, High Street, Ware

A former inn subsequently converted to a house and now commercial premises. The building dates from the 16th century but was refaced and altered during the 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries. It is timber-framed with stucco rendering and a fish-scale patterned tiled roof with a Welsh slated margin, featuring 3 gabled casement dormers.

The exterior presents 2 storeys with attics. The first floor is jettied and carried on paired wooden brackets. Four irregularly spaced flush-set sash windows with glazing bars occupy the first floor, each with exposed boxes and architrave surrounds. The ground floor contains an early 20th-century shopfront at the left beneath the jetty (No. 52), which has a timber-panelled stallriser and broad plate glass display windows set in a canted recess to the right. The original ground floor level was lowered at the front to accommodate the shop.

To the right of the carriageway, No. 55 has an entrance doorway reached by 6 stone steps leading to a 6-fielded panelled door with a rectangular fanlight set in a fielded panelled reveal. Two flush sash windows with glazing bars are positioned to the right, set within a rusticated stuccoed wall. A cellar window is also present.

A central carriageway with an elliptical arch contains twin diagonally boarded doors with a ramped moulded top rail. The left-hand leaf has a wicket with an early 19th-century nameplate reading "Water Row" above it. Timber studwork is exposed in the carriageway above a tarred brick plinth with protective painted boarding. A central binder and rafter are exposed in the soffit, with principal posts carrying the rear of the carriageway on brackets, extended further back in the early 19th century. The carriageway floor has cobbled margins with raised granite spurstones and curbs, and granite slab paving.

An entry door to No. 53 is located to the right at the rear of the carriageway. Dating to the early 17th century, it features 2 recessed panels with a lion-head knocker in the upper panel, set within a moulded surround.

Outshoots are timber-framed and plastered, 2 storeys high, with old tiled roofs. No. 55 displays fan-patterned pargeting on its first floor.

Interior features of No. 53 include a ground floor lowered at the front, while the rear room retains its original floor level and contains an exposed braced tie-beam truss carrying the first floor, with heavy moulded beams. A red brick fireplace with a moulded and embattled timber lintel is present. The former brewhouse and barn in the rear outshoot beyond also contain moulded beams. No. 55 has a large ground floor Tudor-arched brick fireplace. The first floor contains 17th-century oak panelling in the left-hand front room.

The roof over the front block features halved and pegged rafters with collars and side purlins immediately above attic ceiling level. This roof was reworked in the 17th century from an earlier structure. The roof over the rear outshoot of No. 51 has a side purlin roof with windbracing.

The site was originally occupied by The Raven Inn in the 16th century. It subsequently became a house, with a 19th-century malting constructed behind No. 51, which was converted to residential use in the 1980s and is no longer of special architectural interest.