18-19, BISHOPSTROW

This is a house, now subdivided into two cottages, dating back to around the 15th century. It was remodelled in the early 17th century and extended later in the 17th century, with further alterations in the 19th and 20th centuries. The construction is of rendered timber frame and coursed stone rubble, with an asbestos tile roof and gabled ends. It has axial and gable-end stacks with short brick shafts.

The original house was a 3-bay Medieval structure with a low, unheated end that was open to the roof. In the early 17th century, floors were inserted to create chambers above, and an axial stack was built at the low end of the hall. Later in the 17th century, a two-storey wing with a gable-end stack was added to the western front of the low end. Number 18 occupies the hall, while number 19 occupies the low end and the wing. A further property (number 17), located to the south, may have been part of the original house.

The west front is asymmetrical, with a two-window rendered main range on the right and a projecting gable-ended stone wing on the left. There are 20th-century two- and three-light casement windows with glazing bars, a plank door on the right, and a 20th-century glazed door in the angle of the wing on the left. A Victorian letter-box is set into the wall of the gable-end on the left.

Inside number 18, there's an early 17th-century inserted framed ceiling in what was formerly the hall, featuring deeply chamfered intersecting beams. Number 19 has a chamfered cross-beam in the wing. Both cottages display exposed blades of the original 3-bay Medieval roof structure, which includes full cruck-trusses with two collars (the lower cambered), two tiers of trenched purlins, curved wind-braces, and a threaded diagonal ridgepiece. The 2-bay hall roof is chamfered with run-out stops, and there’s an open truss between the hall and the low end. The roof of the hall is heavily smoke-blackened, while the low end roof is only lightly sooted; most of the original Medieval common-rafters remain intact over the hall. The roof of the later 17th-century wing retains collar-trusses, tenoned-purlins, straight wind-braces, and common-rafters.

The property is a good example of a Medieval house that was originally entirely open to the roof, and much of the original roof structure remains complete.