6 and 7 Christmas Steps

A pair of attached houses dating from the 17th century or earlier, with 18th-century additions and later alterations including 19th-century shopfronts.

The buildings are timber-framed with later brick additions, with rendered rear elevations and pantile roof coverings. They are double-depth in plan and rise to three storeys.

The façades were re-fronted in the late-Georgian style as a single-window range of painted brick to each property. Both have 19th-century shopfronts featuring a left-hand door, fascias, cornices and stall risers. Number 6 retains a former timber-glazed shop window with reeded pilasters to each end and below the fascia. Number 7 has a plate-glass shop window and a modern part-glazed shop door with overlight. The first-floor openings have ashlar voussoirs. The left window to number 6 is an eight-over-eight sash. The remaining windows on each floor are modern casements. To the rear are extensions of various dates and sizes. To the right of number 6 stands a stair tower rising above a shallow-pitched full-width kitchen extension. To the left is a two-storey projection under a flat roof, positioned where a possible former stair turret to number 7 once stood. The rear roofs have been replaced with modern flat roofs.

Interior: Each building has a front room at a lower level than the back room, with stairs between them. Each front room contains a chamfered cross beam of large scantling.

Number 6: The right end of the chamfered cross beam has been truncated to accommodate a staircase and is propped. The back wall of the front room is principally a former chimney breast with a doorway inserted to the left. Above the doorway, facing the back room, is an exposed stone corbel that supported a hearth for the fireplace in the room above. The back room has a deep-chamfered cross beam with a step stop to one end and a rear staircase in a turret, now enclosed within a modern kitchen extension. The adjoining wall with number 7 above the front staircase contains some exposed timber framing.

Number 7: The large chamfered cross beam to the front shop has a straight-cut stop to the right end and is supported by a modern pillar. A wide timber bressummer rises above the shopfront window. Above and behind the steps at the back of the room, set closely together, are a cross beam and a boxed beam or steel. The cross beam has been cut through for insertion of the staircase to the first floor. The back room has a chamfered cross beam with a step stop to one end, with the other end set into a chimney breast and a bressummer below. To the rear left of the room is a doorway into the former stair turret, featuring an ovolo-moulded door architrave with plain stops and a modestly moulded doorway above on the first floor, both of 17th-century date. The first floor displays exposed timber framing to the stairwell and front room. The chamfered beam to the front room is morticed and tenoned into the wall plate adjoining number 6. The other end is set in a chimney breast containing a fireplace with an oak bressummer and a daintily decorated 18th-century hob grate. The rear first-floor room also has a chamfered cross beam with step stops, morticed and tenoned into a chamfered post at the number 6 end.