The Almshouses

The Almshouses are a row of six almshouses built in the 18th century, with later repairs and modernisation. A plaque records that they were the gift of Charles Amherst of Bayhill in 1716, and repaired by Earl Camden in 1802, with further modernisation occurring in 1967-68. The construction is of pebbledashed brick on exposed footings of coursed sandstone blocks, with a stucco band and hoodmoulds. The end walls are of exposed Flemish bond red brick with decorative burnt headers, including a flat band, likely dating to the early 18th century, although the gables are built up with later red brick. Brick stacks, possibly with stone bases, and brick chimneyshafts are present, along with a peg-tile roof.

The almshouses face south-west and are numbered 9-19 (odd) from left to right. They have a central passage leading through a communal room that projects slightly forward. The cottages are originally of a single-room plan, with cottages 13 and 15 each featuring an axial stack backing onto the adjacent cottages. Mirror-plan arrangements are found at the end pairs (numbers 9 and 11, and 17 and 19), which share a back-to-back fireplace and axial stack. Each cottage has a staircase and entrance hall located away from the stack. All cottages are two storeys high, with later 20th-century extensions to the rear.

The front facade is symmetrical, presenting a 3:2:3 window arrangement in a restrained Tudor Gothic style. The cottages have 20th-century casement windows with glazing bars, and those on the ground floor have Tudor-style hoodmoulds. Early 19th-century plank doors with coverstrips provide entrance. Gabled hoods with open wavy bargeboards on curving timber brackets cover the doorways at each end. The doorways to the central two cottages are sheltered by a tiled pent roof supported on rustic posts over the front of the central bay. The central doorway, leading to the communal room, is flanked by fixed pane windows containing rectangular panes of old leaded glass. A sandstone datestone with a carved coat of arms is flanked by single-light windows on the first floor. The central bay is gabled with ornamental open cusped bargeboards with large pendants. The main roof is gable-ended with similar, more complete bargeboards at each end.

The interior, accessed only briefly during a survey, revealed only 20th-century detailing, with no visible original carpentry. The roof was not inspected.