99 And 99A, High Street

This is a late 15th-century Chantry Priest's House, now used as a shop and flat. It has undergone alterations in the 17th and 18th centuries, with extensive rebuilding occurring between 1908 and 1923. The original construction incorporates rubble masonry for the lower storey and a timber frame above, with some areas rebuilt in brick. The roof is tiled.

The building is five bays wide, with a gable facing the street, divided into three bays across two storeys, forming a front chamber separated by a cross passage from a smaller rear chamber. A cellar lies beneath the rear chamber, featuring a 4-centred rubble vault. A small square block was added shortly after the original construction, accessible via the cross passage.

The original street front was jettied, but this was removed during the 1923 rebuilding. Only the first-floor structure of the front chambers remains, featuring a ceiling of six panels divided by moulded beams with ogee and quarter-circle detailing. The cross passage is defined by ground-floor partitions, with the front largely rebuilt and the rear retaining its original form, including a doorway to the left with a plain 4-centred head. At the first floor level, part of the front partition survives, incorporating a doorway with a plain 4-centred head and an internal window of two lights with cusped heads. The rear partition has two blocked doorways to the right and a 17th-century doorway to the left with a contemporary ledged door and fittings.

The rear chambers contain a gable stack, mostly rebuilt, but with a 17th-century fireplace featuring a flat 4-centred head and cornice above, in the ground-floor room. Collar-beam roof trusses are visible in the passage and rear chamber, with massive cambered collars, purlins variously butt or clasped and braced to the principal rafters, and a butt ridge piece. The ground storey of an addition has been rebuilt, incorporating a short doorway with a 4-centred head in the rear wall.

The first floor was largely rebuilt in the 18th century and in 1908, though a two-bay collar beam roof remains intact, gabled to the left. The roof has principal rafters and arch-braces springing from short moulded pseudo-hammerbeams, which are actually corbelled sole pieces above moulded plates. A plate towards the street is supported by a post with a half-octagonal shaft, terminating in a moulded capital, from which springs a substantial bracket—likely originating from the lower storey of the front elevation where it would have supported a jetty.

A more elaborate section of roof, featuring arch-braced collars, moulded purlins with inverted wind-braces, and a chimney piece, survived into the early 20th century. The building is associated with a chantry founded by Isabel Bird in 1446 and dissolved in 1548.