4 And 4A, The Traverse

This is a late 16th/early 17th century house, later divided into two shops at numbers 4 and 4A, with significant alterations in the 18th century and subsequent additions. The front of the building is dark red brick with lighter red brick dressings, while the Skinner Street range is faced in 19th-century white brick. The roof is tiled, ornamented with crest tiles.

The front elevation has two storeys, attics, and cellars and displays a five-window range. The windows are sash windows set in flush cased frames with flat gauged arches; the three northern windows have nine panes in the top sashes, while the others have plate glass. The arches above the end and middle windows have moulded soffits, with a recessed panel below each window. Two gabled dormers with pierced and fluted bargeboards feature 2-light casement windows and mock timbering in the gable apexes. The ground floor of number 4 has two 18th-century window surrounds with fixed glass and a six-panel door with an ornamental rectangular fanlight. Number 4A has a late 20th-century shop front.

The Skinner Street range, which is two storeys and attics, is a later 18th-century addition. It features two rendered gables with Edwardian mock-timbering, fluted bargeboards, and ornamental ridge tiles, along with a three-window range with 12-pane sashes in flush cased frames. On the ground floor, number 4 has an Edwardian cross window with a flat gauged arch in red brick, and number 4A has a small-paned 19th-century shop window with pilasters and cornice, flanked by a 20th-century half-glazed door and fanlight. Paired central six-panel doors in plain reveals have semicircular arched heads.

The cellar below number 4 features heavy chamfered main beams to the front range ceiling and similar beams with heavy joists at the rear. The two cellar halves are linked by a 17th-century doorway with moulded jambs. Below number 4A, a thick wall runs through the front cellar at a right angle to The Traverse, featuring a wide low-pointed arch framed by ashlar blocks in regular courses. The Skinner Street range has a single massive chamfered main beam. The ground storey, now divided into two, is one frame with two rooms along the street frontage, both featuring ovolo moulded main beams; additional applied mouldings are present in number 4. An 18th-century passageway through the middle of the house has been removed. The 18th-century dog-leg stair in the Skinner Street range has barley sugar twist balusters, a wreathed and ramped handrail, and a dado with sunk panels. The stair to the front attic displays 18th-century vase-on-reel balusters, likely reused. The upper storeys of number 4A have undergone significant modernization.