41, High Street

The building at 41 High Street is a house, now used as a shop and offices, dating from the late medieval period and significantly remodelled around 1820. The front is faced with limestone ashlar, while the rear is roughcast over rubble; it has an interlocking tile roof with brick stacks, a mansard form to the front and a gabled form to the rear. The building combines a three-storey front section with an earlier two-storey rear section, the latter preserving medieval fabric, linked by a lower-roofed passage.

The front presents a Late Georgian Greek Revival style. It is three storeys high and has a two-window front. A 20th-century shop front is located on the right-hand side, with a doorway and plate-glass window. Features include pilaster strips below a cornice, which has weathered to a panelled parapet; a battered architrave above the first-floor plate-glass window, and 3/3-pane vertical glazing bar sashes to the second floor. A 20th-century dormer window is also present. The rear of the building features 19th-century sash windows, including large 6/6-pane sashes to light the interior.

Inside, the ground floor has been updated in the 20th century. A staircase is located on the right-hand side, and a central, lateral attic staircase has stick balusters and column newels. The rear block retains two bays of a late medieval roof, constructed around 1400-1450, with chamfered arched windbracing to the chamfered tenoned purlins. One truss features a chamfered arch brace to the collar and ashlar posts resting on a pair of wooden angel corbels. The ground floor also features a keyed segmental-arched fireplace from the early 19th century. A single segmental-arched basement vault runs from the front to the back of the building.

The survival of this fabric is significant in demonstrating what a late medieval urban property in Bristol would have looked like, with the only comparable roof structures being found at Quakers Friars.