15, High Street

Terraced house on High Street, dating to the late 18th or early 19th century, with possibly an earlier range to the rear. The ground floor has been substantially altered in the late 20th century with a modern shop installation, but the upper storeys retain significant Georgian character.

The narrow single-bay frontage faces the High Street. The ground floor features a modern shop front executed in a traditional style. The first floor has a modern pair of sash windows set within a single opening, which replaced a 19th-century bay window. Above this is a single sash window on the upper storey that appears to be original. The brick building has been stuccoed on this elevation and is topped with a tiled hipped roof and chimneys supported by the party walls either side.

To the rear stands an abutting range orientated east-west, no wider than the frontage. This section has a pitched roof, a Georgian sash window in the western gable and a single exposed diagonal timber brace in the southern wall. The southern wall also contains a sash window at ground floor level.

The interior retains a significant proportion of Georgian fabric on the first and second floors. The original staircase survives with a plain handrail, stick balusters and a square newel post. Lath and plaster work and some slightly reeded plank panelling remain intact. Two fireplaces occupy the front rooms on both floors, each with understated timber surrounds and iron grates. The first-floor example is slightly larger, featuring a surround with two fluted columns and no sill. A round-arched alcove exists in the first-floor front room, and several wall cupboards with original shelving survive in place: two on the first floor (one below the alcove, one beside the staircase) and a third on the staircase itself. Cornices, skirting boards, doors and architraves date from the early 19th century.

The first and second floors are accessed from the upper room in the rear range, a single-cell two-storey structure containing few original features internally, though the small winder staircase may date to the 19th century. This rear range could be earlier than the front section. The roof structures were not inspected.

The ground floor retains nothing of historic interest, having been refitted as a late 20th-century shop interior.

The plan form remains intact: two rooms divided by a partition with a staircase to the rear, and a second interconnected single-cell range to the south. There is little evidence that the staircase ever extended to ground floor level; the upper floors appear always to have been accessed via the rear range.

The north part of the building, facing the street, is Georgian in character, most likely dating to the late 18th or early 19th century. The single exposed timber visible on the rear elevation suggests older fabric may exist in this section, particularly in the roof structure. A mid-19th-century print shows the building with a bay window on the first floor, which was removed in the second half of the 20th century when the ground floor was refurbished.