West End House

West End House is a house that has been converted into shops, dating from the mid-17th century, with later alterations in the late 19th and mid-20th centuries. The building features colourwashed render with stone dressings, ashlar copings, and a gabled pantile roof with a brick stack at the south end.

The plan consists of three units, originally serving as a domestic range to the right, with the entrance to the left next to a carriage entry. The exterior is two storeys high with an attic and has a four-window range. On the ground floor, from the left, there is a glazed late 19th-century shopfront, a gated former carriage entry, a 20th-century glazed entrance doorway, and another glazed mid-20th-century shopfront. The first floor to the right features ovolo-moulded cross-mullion windows with dripstones, consisting of three lights in the outer bays and two lights in the centre. The left side of the first floor has a 17th-century dripstoned opening with 19th-century cross-mullioned windows, all fitted with plate glass. There are also two raking dormers with three-light late 20th-century casements and pantiled roofs.

Inside, the main doorway leads to a mid-17th-century dog-leg staircase that has plain, post-like newels, a moulded handrail, and bulbous vase balusters. There is a two-light ovolo-moulded mullion on the south wall of the half-landing and a further blocked mullion, which is now boarded up, on the west wall of the stairwell. The landing features a moulded door architrave with bar stops.

Historically, the building is believed to be located on the site of the former Hospice of St John, which served as a guesthouse for Keynsham Abbey. An early 19th-century drawing of the hospice by Buckler does not resemble the current West End House, making it notable as one of the earliest properties in Keynsham.