1, St Margaret'S Place

A complex house of multiple building phases occupying the junction of St Margaret's Place and College Lane, with accretions arranged around a small rear courtyard. In 1982 it was converted to offices serving the Magistrates Court in College Lane. The building combines work spanning from the late 15th century to the late 20th century.

The earliest part, a College Lane building of late 15th-century date, was altered and had its west gable rebuilt in 1982 to abut the new magistrates court. It is constructed in brick with areas of conglomerate and ashlar, beneath a pantiled roof. The north front presents 2 storeys in 3 wide bays. The ground-floor east bay contains a modest added entrance extension with a 20th-century door and window, flanked to the right by 2 sashes—the first a 20th-century tripartite replacement. The first floor displays 3 mullioned timber windows beneath a gabled roof. The rear opens onto the courtyard, where much 15th-century brick walling remains evident. Two inserted openings in the ground floor contain a casement and a sash, set under late 20th-century soldier arches, with a blocked doorway between them under a depressed arch and segmental relieving arch above. Above and to the left is a blocked round-arched window, repeated as a recess in the interior. A 4-light mullioned window is placed to the right at first-floor level.

Inside, one room retains early 17th-century masons' mitre small-framed panelling on three of its walls, the panels bearing incised bead-edging. The west wall has been opened into an adjacent room under a rolled steel joist.

The corner portion of the house, substantially of mid-17th-century date, occupies 2 storeys across 2 bays to College Lane and 1 bay to St Margaret's Place, ingeniously contrived to present a gable-end to each front. The College Lane front shows 2 ground-floor 18th-century sashes with exposed boxes and glazing bars set beneath 17th-century moulded hoods. Two further moulded hoods appear above with blocked windows, and one more hood at attic level. A gabled pantiled roof with returns to former east and west parapets crowns this section. The St Margaret's Place front features a 20th-century tripartite sash to the ground floor and a mid-18th-century sash with glazing bars at first and attic storeys, beneath another gabled roof with a brick stack at the junction of the two gables. A blocked 2-light mullioned cellar window is positioned below.

To the south, a 2-storey, 5-bay addition of mid-18th-century date in red brick with a plaintile roof (pantiles to rear) fronts St Margaret's Place. It has a central panelled door in a doorcase with panelled reveals and plain Ionic pilasters supporting a broken pediment, with a fanlight above. The fenestration comprises sashes with glazing bars and gauged skewback arches, with a timber modillion eaves cornice and gabled roof. The rear opens into the courtyard through an outshut under a catslide roof, the latter forming the former rear wall of a 16th-century brick building. Two round-arched sashes with glazing bars were inserted in the 18th century at ground-floor level; that to the south was converted to a door late in the 20th century. Two 20th-century plate-glass windows occupy the floor above. The interior retains only minor 18th-century details alongside an early 19th-century staircase with stick balusters and ramped and wreathed handrail, though the flights above ground floor are entirely late 20th-century copies.

South again is a late 18th-century, 2-storey, 2-bay extension in brown brick also fronting St Margaret's Place, without a door. It displays 2 sashes per floor with glazing bars and gauged skewback arches, a timber eaves cornice, and a gabled slate roof. An internal gable-end stack stands to the south. The rear forms the south side of the courtyard.