37 37A (PART), HIGH STREET (See details for further address information)

A hall house dating from the late 15th century, converted to an inn in the 18th century and now subdivided into ground floor commercial premises with flats above. The building is timber-framed with a plaster front, altered in the 17th and 18th centuries, with ground floors rebuilt in the 1960s and 1990s.

The front block has a steeply pitched old tiled roof with the left-hand end hipped, and a cruciform-plan shafted brick chimneystack. It follows a four-bay modified cross passage plan with an upper hall.

The exterior is two storeys high. The first floor is jettied with a moulded fascia over the right-hand shop. There is one flush sash window with glazing bars to the upper level on the left side and five plain glazed flush-set sash windows to the upper level on the right side.

The left-hand ground floor has an early 19th-century shopfront with timber pilasters, a projecting segmental bow window divided into three by mullions, and a fascia with moulded cornice above, broken by a segmental section over the shop window. A modern half-glazed door in a pilaster surround is set at the left. To the right of the shopfront is a carriageway with an exposed post and exposed timber-framing, with twin blocked ogee-headed door openings.

The right-hand ground floor has a 1990s arcaded shop window with two runs of oak frames and a glazed entrance door, with a modern fascia with applied mouldings. Behind this is a rear wing, two storeys high, built in plum brick with red dressings, with first floor and eaves level plat bands. It has three first floor flush-set sash windows with glazing bars and exposed boxes under cambered red rubbed arches, and an old tiled roof behind a parapet. A rear outshoot continues as a timber-framed structure with a red brick ground floor, weatherboarded first floor and tiled roof, restored in 1990.

The interior of the ground floors is of little architectural interest. At the rear of the right-hand property, within the ground floor of the 18th-century rear outshoot, is a mid-18th-century staircase of L-plan open-well design with open string, profiled brackets to treads, column-on-vase balusters, a curtail step, and a ramped and wreathed handrail with panelled dado. The lower flight was altered in 1990.

The first floor of the left-hand upper property has an 18th-century cornice in the left-hand room and exposed studwork of a central arch-braced tie-beam truss. An inserted chimneystack is set in the party wall to the right-hand flat. The roof contains halved and pegged rafters and a close-studded partition with wattle and daub infill one bay from the left, with a crown post featuring downward-curved bracing on the partition. A free-standing cruciform-plan late 15th-century crown post with curved braces fore and aft to the collar purlin, and transverse to the collar, stands nearby. Adjacent to the inserted stack appears to be a second free-standing crown post of the same pattern. The roof was strengthened with sprung steel braces and ties in 1990.

The interior of the rear right-hand property has a mid-18th-century panelled room with recessed panels, moulded dado and cornice, a fire surround with pilasters, and an overmantel with moulded architrave, recessed panel and projecting pilaster caps breaking the cornice above. The rear part of the outshoot was converted to a flat in 1990 and has four bays of timber-frame with exposed 17th-century tie-beam trusses with coach-nailed arch braces, queen struts and collars. Repairs in 1990 include new timbers crafted in using a revival of the archaic stop-splayed scarf joint.