The Old Bell

The Old Bell is a public house on Bell Street, probably once a wing of a large town-house, with timber framing dated dendrochronologically to 1325 and alterations continuing through the centuries, with the front refaced around 1920.

The building is timber-framed, now behind a later front of brick to the ground floor with imitation framing above, and clay tile roof. It is two storeys tall, one bay wide by three bays deep. An inserted stack between the second and third bays divides the front and rear ground-floor bar areas. A side passage to the right of the stack gives access to stairs leading down to the cellar and up to the first floor, which was originally a single chamber open to the roof but is now subdivided and ceiled over. There is a single-storey extension to the rear of no special interest.

The west front elevation has a brick ground floor, infilled beneath the original jetty, with horizontally sliding sash windows and a doorway to the right. The first floor is rendered with imitation box framing and a central casement window. The roof is hipped to the front, replacing an original gable, with a lower gabled roof to the rear bay.

The building contains substantial survival of early 14th-century timber framing. Several original posts and studs remain in the ground-floor north wall, including a sturdy wall post whose splayed head contains a cut-off tenon from an original, much lower ceiling beam, and further tenons and peg holes for two additional braces, indicating the site of a former lateral partition. Further back are the jambs and lintel of an original side door. The ceiling structure in the front two bays was raised during the 18th century, reusing the original transverse beam and close-set joists. The lighter ceiling structure in the rear bay is later, probably 17th century. A brick stack, an early insertion, has back-to-back fireplaces to front and back rooms. The brick south wall, shared with No. 18 Bell Street, is of around 1800 and contains a series of low segmental arches. First-floor framing survives in the two front bedrooms. In the front wall, curved tension braces run between corner posts and jambs of the central window opening, whose head (with curved braces forming a pointed arch and plaster infill to the spandrels) can be seen in the attic above. In the north side wall, a second post is set a short distance behind the corner post, perhaps supporting an original hung jetty, with further studs behind. Main wall posts beneath the second roof truss have straight diagonal braces to the sides and curved braces supporting tie-beams in the attic above. Similar posts with curved braces in the north wall support the third and fourth trusses.

In the attic space, much of the original crown-post roof structure survives. Principal timbers are chamfered, with chamfer-stops at the intersections. Sharply cambered tie-beams originally supported a series of moulded crown posts with curved braces running up to collars and collar purlins. This arrangement now survives only in the second truss, whose octagonal crown post has a richly ovolo-moulded cap and a square base with spur-like mouldings to the corners; a trimmer beam immediately behind this truss may have accommodated an earlier chimney or smoke hood. The crown post in the first truss was removed to create the hipped roof, although its seating can be seen on the front tie-beam. The crown post in the third truss was removed with the insertion of the stack, with only a mortice in the collar purlin now showing its location. Original coupled rafters survive in the front two bays, except where cut back for the hipped roof. The roof to the rear attic bay has been converted into a utility room, concealing the roof structure.

No. 20 Bell Street probably represents a single wing of a large timber-framed building of the early 14th century, of which the remaining portion has been lost. The surviving section was originally gabled and jettied on the street front, with a broad arched upper-level window, possibly an oriel, lighting a substantial first-floor chamber with a finely-moulded crown-post roof. It is possible that the rear portion of the present building once formed part of an open hall; the ceiling structure here was inserted at a later date, perhaps in the 17th century, and may be contemporary with the large brick stack that now divides the middle and rear bays.

The first documentary reference to the building comes from 1713, when it was still in domestic use. In the 1760s it became a public house known as the Duke of Cumberland, under the ownership of a local brewer named Taylor; it was associated with the property to the south, now Nos. 16–18, which was rebuilt around 1800 and later became the town's assembly rooms. The building's conversion into a pub necessitated the excavation of a small cellar at the front, which in turn required the ceiling in the front two bays to be raised, reusing much of the old timber. Other changes included the insertion of a ceiling in the attic space, the infilling of the area beneath the jetty, and the cutting back of the front gable to form a hipped roof. The present false timber framing on the front elevation dates from the 1920s, when the pub acquired its present name.