83, Southgate Street

This is a house, formerly an inn, dating back to the 15th century, with additions and alterations from the 16th and 17th centuries, and a 19th-century front facade. It is timber-framed, rendered, and has old plain tiled roofs, with pantiles to a single-storey extension on the south side. An internal chimney-stack connects the front and rear ranges.

The front of the building has two 3-light casement windows to the upper storey, each with a single horizontal glazing bar. On the ground floor are two canted flat-roofed bays with small-paned sash windows, and a 12-pane sash window within the single-storey extension. A recessed central 20th-century door leads up steps to a moulded wood surround.

Internally, the rear range is the oldest part of the building and represents a solar-and-service cross-wing to a former open hall. The ground floor partition wall of the service rooms has been removed. There are two blocked rebated doorways with 4-centred arched heads in the inner wall; one doorway was later converted to a window, now blocked. Original features include heavy close-studding and unchamfered joists. A blocked former diamond-mullioned window is visible in the south wall on each storey; diamond mullion housings suggest that paired windows originally existed in the upper gable. The roof is a crown-post roof, showing evidence of alteration, with a square chamfered crown-post, thin braces to a collar purlin, and solid arched braces to the tie-beam. The chimney-stack between the two ranges is built of Tudor brick with two back-to-back hearths on the ground floor, both with timber lintels, one of which has been replaced. The south half of the front was rebuilt in the 16th century as a jettied two-storey range, featuring a heavy spine beam with a wide chamfer; the rear joists are flat and unchamfered, while the front joists are a 17th-century replacement set on edge. The north half of the front is a later 17th or early 18th-century addition with lighter timbering, primary bracing on the upper storey, and bisected studs. The roof over the front range is a replacement from the 18th century, incorporating a ridge piece.