81 And 81A, Southgate Street

81 and 81A Southgate Street is a house, now divided into two, dating from the later 15th century and extensively restored in the 1950s. It features a timber-framed structure with a jettied upper part that is roughcast rendered and decorated with mock timbering. The roofs are slate.

The building is two storeys high with attics, and No.81 has a cellar. The jetty is supported by two small brackets. The ground floor windows have 20th-century metal casements, and there are recessed 20th-century entries with brick surrounds. There are extensions at the rear.

Inside, the cellar of No.81 has a 19th-century vaulted brick roof over older walls made of flint, brick, and stone. The rear wall of No.81 displays exposed framing, including a middle rail and widely spaced studs. A stop splayed scarf is present in the wallplate, along with a shutter slide and a four-light diamond mullioned window below it, with the mullions still in place and an unusually wide sill. On the ground floor, a boxed-in main beam may indicate part of a former partition wall, with a doorhead and remnants of a cross entry nearby. The upper storey features a cambered tie-beam of an open truss supported by heavy arched braces. In the attic, a cross quadrate crown-post is embedded in the partition wall between the two houses.

No.81A does not have exposed studding, but the main beam and trimmer on the ground floor have wide chamfers and pyramid stops. Empty mortices in the soffit of the beam suggest there was once a wide screen with a cross-entry beyond it. The 16th-century alterations indicate a reversal of layout between the two ends of the building, with the service end moving from south to north. In the attic of No.81A, the crown-post was removed during 20th-century alterations, but housings in the tie-beam suggest there were associated studding or downward-sloping braces.