3, Downing Street

Number 3 Downing Street is a building dated 1717, featuring an older timber-framed core. It is two storeys high and constructed of fine-quality red brick with ribbed brick dressings. The building has a chamfered plinth that is rendered, and a string course at the first-floor level that stops at the projecting central bay. An elaborate carved brick cornice, which is moulded and dentilled, breaks forward over the central bay, which also has a pediment displaying the raised date panel in the tympanum. The brick parapet is panelled over the side windows and also breaks forward over the central bay, topped with moulded brick coping.

On the first floor, there are five windows, with the central window set in a double raised surround featuring base mouldings of carved brick and small raised blocks on either side. The ground floor has four windows, all of which are fitted with stone cills and sashes that have been restored with glazing bars. The central entrance is a four-panel door, which is a later addition, set within a plain doorcase that features early 19th-century pilasters, a frieze, and a cornice. This doorcase is surrounded by an original carved brick surround with narrow panelled pilasters, double scroll brackets, and a frieze between the brackets that has double curved cut ornament flanking a central block with carved shell ornament, all topped with a moulded brick cornice. The south front also has a panelled parapet. The building was illustrated in Country Life on July 10, 1942, in plates 6 and 7.

Number 3 Downing Street, along with Numbers 2, 3, and 4, and the wall to Number 4, form a group with the listed buildings on the south side of Lower Church Lane and should be considered in relation to those buildings.