51, High Street

This is a late 17th-century town house, likely with internal remodelling around 1720-40. It is constructed with stucco over a rubble core, featuring a granite plinth, an asbestos slate roof with a modillion wood cornice, brick end stacks, and a lead-lined timber launder. The rear is of killas rubble with timber lintels. The building follows a double-depth plan with a central staircase leading to the rear. It comprises two storeys plus an attic, built over a basement at the rear, and has a three-window front. The early 19th century features hornless sash windows with glazing bars. The central doorway has an early 19th-century wooden doorcase, with corner blocks and roundels, enclosing a recessed panelled door. The roof has two slate-hung raking dormers with late 20th-century windows, and two similar dormers with earlier sash windows with thick glazing bars to the rear.

The interior retains high-quality original features, including a late 17th-century staircase with heavy barley-twist balusters, moulded ceiling cornices, bolection-moulded oak panelling, a fine moulded ribbed ceiling to the rear left-hand parlour, and pine panelling to the front right-hand parlour. The basement has a fixed leaded window illuminating the stairs and retains fragments of wooden ceiling cornice and horizontal boarded panelling alongside a wide doorway and a former kitchen area with a blocked segmental-arched opening. The ground-floor room to the rear right contains ovolo-moulded panelling and shelved cupboards flanking a fireplace, all dating to the early 18th century, while the fielded panelling in the hall is also of this period. Later, in the early 19th century, the house was fitted with window shutters in moulded architraves and neoclassical chimney pieces. The attic, originally with halved and pegged apexes and trenched purlins, was refitted as housekeeper’s accommodation in the same period, featuring panelled and plank doors and simple fire surrounds. The presence of warehousing facilities in the basement illustrates the building’s original function as a merchant’s house, which is notable for its exceptionally fine interior and well-preserved features.