13-21, HIGH STREET

A row of houses with shops, now divided into five premises, likely built in the first half of the 16th century. Later alterations occurred in the 19th and 20th centuries. The building is timber-framed with wattle and daub infill, now rendered and with some brick rebuilding and rear additions. The roof is tiled; clay tiles cover numbers 13 to 17, while machine-made tiles are used on numbers 19 and 21. Red brick stacks are present.

Originally jettied, the row is five and a half bays wide. The half bay on the left side of number 17 was originally a smoke bay with a chimney inserted probably in the early 17th century (the stack is now truncated). The right bay (number 21) was probably added later, and numbers 19 and 21 were combined into a pair in the early to mid-19th century. 20th-century rear additions are not of specific interest.

The number 13 front elevation is of early to mid-19th century red brick, generally in a header bond, featuring a part-glazed door on the left and a 9-pane sash window in an exposed sash box on the right, each with a crude flat brick area. There is a two-light window above. Numbers 15 to 21 have 20th-century shop fronts on the ground floor with a continuous outshut, alongside a first-floor window each. The windows at numbers 17 and 21 include old two-light, four-pane wood casements, while the remainder are late 20th-century replacements. Number 21 has a late 20th-century signboard and a hipped roof with a stack on the front roof pitch.

The timber frame is most clearly visible in number 13 and the ground floor of number 19, but is also present in the other buildings. Features include jowelled wall posts, posts with brackets to the jetty bressumer, with a moulded profile on the bracket in number 13; joists, some of which are chamfered with chamfered ends below the bressumer; partition walls and evidence of others. Number 19 had a shop on the right and a through-passage or second room (shared with number 17) on the left. The interior includes beams with broad chamfers and stepped cyma stops, a first-floor ceiling, cambered tie beams and collars, clasped purlins, old arched rafters with passing struts in the roof of number 15, and sooted rafters in the former smoke bay of number 17, which has early brickwork to the inserted stack. Number 19 has a cellar with a front wall of chalk rubble.