Registrar'S Office The Old House

This is a hall and cross-wing house, built in the 16th century and altered over time. Part of the complex, numbers 20 and a section of 18A, now serves as a Registrar's Office, shop, and three flats. The building is timber-framed with painted wattle and daub infill, brick under-building, some rubblestone, and tile-hanging, with plain tile roofs.

The section at the far left, encompassing numbers 20 and part of 18A, is two stories and two bays wide. It features a recessed, part-glazed front door flanked by 20th-century three-light leaded windows. The first floor has large square panelling, and two three-light windows with leaded casements. A single-flue stack is located on the right side, directly in front of a roof pitch. The rear of this section shows brick infill to timber framing, some rubblestone, and a 17th-century external stack of rubblestone with brick quoins and a tall brick flue.

To the right of this section is an earlier range of two stories with an attic, consisting of three bays, the right bay an addition, and the left bay a gabled cross-wing. The right bays have a ground floor constructed of brick around 1900, with ashlar dressings, a chamfered plinth, two Tudor-arched moulded doorways with board doors flanking a central Tudor-arched window, and smaller similar windows to either side. The first floor is timber-framed and includes a four-light leaded casement window on the left and a three-light transomed window with diamond-leaded casement to the right, rising under a gablet. A late 19th-century attic floor has a four-light leaded casement window. A stack is located on the rear roof pitch to the right.

The shop front of the cross-wing features timber pilasters and a recessed door. The jettied first floor has arch-braced timber framing, a six-light mullion and transom window, and a small, old window with diamond leading and some old glass to the far right. The gable is tile-hung with decorative fishscale tiles and has a three-light window and a one-light window above, both with leaded lights and tile pentices.

Inside number 20/18A, there is an inglenook fireplace, mortices indicate a former partition wall between bays, arched braces from posts to tie-beams, and queen-post roof trusses. The cross-wing displays old joists, jowled posts, arched braces, a chamfered wall-plate, the head of a first-floor window in the front wall, and large curved wind braces in the roof. A bay to the right, on the first floor, has brattished decoration to the front wall plate and to a hollow-moulded beam near the rear wall.