40,42, KING STREET

Nos. 40 and 42 King Street is a shop and house, now used as offices. The building dates from the late 14th century, with a 20th-century shopfront added to No. 40 and an early 19th-century brown brick skin to No. 42. The structure is timber-framed and has a pantile roof.

No. 40 features a double plate-glass shopfront with a central door, while the first floor is rendered and has two sash windows with glazing bars set within flush frames. No. 42 has an arched doorway on the right fitted with a late 20th-century door. The shopfront on the left fills a former segmentally-arched carriage entrance to the rear, which is now part of the premises. The first floor has two sash windows with glazing bars and gauged skewback arches. The roof is continuous and gabled, with two dormers—one on No. 40 with a rounded head and the other flat-topped and late 20th-century, both featuring late 20th-century casements.

At the rear, there is a two-storey and attic late 20th-century cross wing in yellow brick and a glass-roofed outshut to the north. Inside, remnants of the 14th-century shop's studwork can be seen. A doorway in No. 42 leads into a timber-framed passage that ends in an arched doorway, although the door is missing and only its south arched brace remains. The passageway itself is arch-braced, but only the southern studs are intact. This doorway opens into No. 40, which retains one arched brace. An arched brace is also present at the front jetty, possibly indicating a pentice. No. 42 was gutted in the 1960s to create a service access archway and was converted again into a building in 1987. Two joists remain on the first floor, but the roof has not been inspected.