Sapphire Moon

Sapphire Moon is a house with ground-floor shop on the High Street in Thame, probably dating to the 17th century with later alterations and late 20th-century modifications.

The building is timber-framed, refronted in brick with a plain-tile roof. A modern tile-hung gable wall is present to the right. It is a small two-bay, two-storey building plus attic, fronting directly onto the High Street pavement with later extensions to the rear.

The timber-framed structure, probably 17th-century, is clad with pale pink bricks with darker red bricks to quoins and to window and door edges, applied in the later 18th or early 19th century when the building line was pushed outward onto the pavement by approximately 0.5 metres. The front façade has a large six-over-three paned shop window (seemingly a 20th-century replacement) with the front door to its left. On the first floor are two 16-paned casements extending upward to the roof line. The gabled attic was converted for residential use at an unknown date, indicated by long dormer windows to front (replaced around 2000) and rear. To the rear, two smaller multi-paned casements are visible at first-floor level. The original ground-floor arrangement is obscured by a single-storey brick extension with catslide roof and a further flat-roofed 20th-century extension.

Internally, the ground floor has two internal transverse beams dividing the 17th-century building into three sections with exposed joists between them. At the front the original corner posts are visible with decorative jowls. The first inner transverse beam has chamfers and double-notched stops; supporting wall posts have decorative jowls. The second transverse beam is chamfered with run-out stop. A modern staircase to the first floor at the rear reveals large timber-framed panels with diagonal bracing. Two rooms to the first-floor front have near-identical chamfered transverse beams supported on wall posts with decorative jowls and exposed ceiling joists. In the rear wall is a blocked and mutilated round-headed two-light wooden window frame. Modern stairs rise to the converted attic with two purlins to either side and some exposed panelling to end walls. The brick extensions to the rear are wholly or largely 20th-century and are not of special interest.

The property stands on the north side of High Street at the point where it broadens eastwards into the classic expanded medieval street market place. Late 19th-century Ordnance Survey mapping shows a degraded plot pattern but it is likely that the property originated as a medieval burgage. The adjacent building at No. 85 High Street to the west (at the junction with One Bell Lane) is a 17th-century and later timber-framed building (listed Grade II); No. 87 to the east is 14th-century and cruck-framed (Grade II). No. 86 has probably long served as a shop with residential accommodation above, a use which continues today.

The core of the building is a two-storey timber-framed structure, probably of 17th-century date, with substantial parts of its frame surviving from ground floor to roof. Various sections of the timber-framed core are visible internally at ground- and first-floor level and in the converted attic, including part of an original wooden window to the first-floor rear wall and decorative elements such as brackets and stops. In the later 18th or early 19th century it was refronted in brick, pushing the building line outward onto the pavement by approximately 0.5 metres. Changes have been made over the years to enable the building's continued use but these have not detracted from its essential character or interest. The 20th-century extensions to the rear, especially the outer flat-roofed one, are not of special interest.