56, High Street

This is a late 14th-century Wealden-type house with a 16th–17th century wing added to the rear. The upper end of the house is now part of the adjacent property at No. 54. The building was restored in 1974–76. It is timber framed and rendered, with exposed studding visible at the front, and includes traces of embattled ornament on the mid rail. The roof is pantiled. The house has two storeys and an attic. A jettied service cell has exposed joist-ends and traces of a carved buttress shaft. The flying wallplate retains original brackets. Each floor has two oak mullioned windows dating to 1986. To the far left is a reused 16th–17th century battened plank door. A second doorway has been blocked. The stack has an axial shaft.

The former open hall has a raised-aisle form. A low tie beam with a shafted soffit was formerly knee-braced to the wallposts. This supports a tall cross-quadrate arcade with massive braces to the upper tie beam, meeting at the centre. The sides have ties to the wallplates; the rear tie has two braces, and the front extends to the flying wallplate, making the truss symmetrical. Evidence suggests a former upper crown-post truss, along with the arcade plates, but these are missing, and the roof is a later reconstruction using many sooted rafters. At the upper end of the hall, a knee-braced tie beam indicates that the house was originally built against an earlier wing. A later rebuild of this wing has a crude scarf joint with the 14th-century wallplate, which is now failing. The studding is largely intact. A rear wall features a cross-entry doorway with a two-centred arch and a 6-light hall window with square mullions. The service end has plain joists, with evidence of an axial division. A 16th-century inserted floor has chamfered joists. The rear wing, in two and a half bays, has widely spaced studs, irregular plain joists, and a side purlin roof that replaced an earlier crown-post type. A stack was inserted in the lower bay of the hall in two phases; the service-end fireplace has a lintol made from reused timber showing traces of medieval doorhead peg holes.