12, Southgate Street

No. 12 Southgate Street is a house, formerly with a shop, dating from the 14th century, with an early 19th-century rear extension. The building is timber-framed, featuring exposed timbering on the front with widely spaced studs and large tension braces. It has a 20th-century double Roman tiled roof.

The house is two storeys high and consists of two bays. There are two windows on each storey: the upper storey has two-light small-paned casements, while the ground storey has 20th-century small-paned sliding sashes. The entrance door is also from the 20th century. The rear extension is constructed of flint and brick and has a slate roof. It features two 12-pane sash windows in plain reveals on the first storey and one segmental-arched tripartite sash window on the ground storey.

Inside, the cellar beneath the rear range has walls made of flint, brick, and stone, with a replaced ceiling. Although visible remains of the 14th-century house are limited, a survey conducted during restoration in the early 1980s recorded several original features. The house includes the former two-bay open hall of a small 14th-century house, but no other parts of the original building remain. A gap in the front framing of the larger south bay indicates the position of the hall window. The crown-post roof features plain square crown-posts that are braced only to the collar-purlin and rest on straight arch-braced tie-beams, with prominent jowls at the post-heads of the truss. There is a noticeable difference in ceiling heights on the ground storey between the two bays, suggesting they were floored over at different times. The wallplate along the front of the roof has been reinforced, and the ceiling in the ground storey room of the rear range has been renewed.