The Ancient House, and 65 and 67 High Street

The Ancient House, and 65 and 67 High Street, West Malling

This group of buildings comprises shops and a storeroom, with evidence suggesting earlier uses as a priest's house to a nunnery, a building in monastic ownership or a merchant's house, and later as an inn and jail.

The Ancient House dates to circa 1160-80, with possible 14th-century alterations, reroofed around 1460 and refenestrated in the early 19th century. It was originally a chamber block above an undercroft with an external staircase, no longer extant, and may have formed part of a larger structure. The building is constructed of ragstone rubble and some tufa blocks with roughly quoined corners, with a tiled roof and one 19th-century brick chimneystack. It is two storeys high.

The north front has two 19th-century inserted casements with brick dressings. The ground floor contains a 14th or 15th-century blocked pointed arched doorcase on the left, which led to the undercroft, and a low-positioned medieval blocked rectangular stone window opening. A later doorcase with a 20th-century door, 19th-century inserted plank door and adjoining casement are also present. The east wall retains part of a low semicircular tufa arch, indicating where the external staircase once stood. The absence of windows on the west end wall suggests there may have been an earlier hall on the site of the current 16th-century link block.

Internally, the first-floor chamber contains two windows dating to circa 1160-80 with chevron arches and scallop capitals. A 15th-century stone chimneypiece with wooden bressumer is present, along with an intact 15th-century sans-purlin roof featuring three tall chamfered crownposts with four headbraces. These crownposts are similar in type to those at Old Gilwyns, Chiddingstone, dated to circa 1460. Evidence from a former inhabitant suggests an undercroft with wooden access trap may exist beneath the ground floor.

Numbers 65 and 67 are 15th-century buildings, with No. 67 rebuilt in the 17th century. The link block connecting the front of No. 67 to the Ancient House probably dates to the 16th century and was refenestrated in the mid-19th century.

The front part of Nos. 65 and 67 is timber-framed, refronted in stucco with an old tiled roof and central brick chimneystack. Both buildings are two storeys with attics.

No. 65 has two first-floor casements and a 19th-century shopfront. No. 67 features a second-floor mid-19th-century sash window with verticals only and moulded architrave, a first-floor three-light canted bay on brackets, and a 20th-century shopfront.

The link block between the front of No. 67 and the Ancient House is timber-framed with red brick underbuilding on the ground floor and a tiled roof. Internally it contains a 16th-century chamfered beam and a collar rafter roof. No. 67 has a 15th-century stone fireplace to the first-floor front room with a mid-19th-century cast iron firegrate, exposed 15th or early 16th-century framing with lamb's tongue stops, the top of a medieval doorframe, and a three-plank door. The attic contains a 15th-century octagonal crownpost with moulded top and base and four headbraces to the collar beam, with a side-purlin roof.

Deeds from 1681 indicate that at least part of the property was known as "the Angel, formerly the Bull". An inn called the Bull was mentioned as being well established by 1442. The creation of grand heated chambers in two parts of the property during the mid-15th century would be consistent with use as an inn.

Domestic buildings of the 12th century are very rare in the south east and rare nationally, making this an exceptionally important survival.