Numbers 38 And 39 And Attached Wall

An inn, now offices. The building represents a refronting and remodelling dated 1680 of an early 16th-century house, with alterations made in the 18th and 19th centuries and restoration carried out in 1992–93.

The exterior is constructed of limestone ashlar with a stone slate roof and ashlar stacks positioned at the gable ends and to the right of centre. The building forms a range to the front with a central-entry, three-room plan, and includes rear wings featuring an early 18th-century stair turret to the right.

The principal front elevation presents three storeys arranged as a symmetrical three-window range. The original windows featured cavetto-moulded stone mullions, with two-light windows to the centre flanked by four-light splayed full-height bays. These survive on the second floor with modern glazing. The first floor contains a 19th-century plate-glass sash window to the centre and similar paired windows to the lower floors of the right-hand bay. The left-hand bay has restored paired six-over-six-pane sashes to the first floor and an early 20th-century shop window below. The central 18th-century stone doorcase features Ionic pilasters supporting a mid entablature and pediment. An 18th-century eight-panel door glazed to the top with raised and fielded panels below sits adjacent to an early 19th-century six-panel door with a four-pane overlight. The façade is spanned by a balustraded parapet and modillion cornice (restored), which follows the contour of the splayed bays and returns to the left, with moulded string courses between floors. The recently restored rear includes a large early 19th-century bay window and an 18th-century stair turret with thick Gothic-pattern glazing bars. A rear door of 18th-century date, now inside a 20th-century lean-to, has six panels and a large timber lock.

The interior of Number 38 contains a stone-moulded and stopped Tudor arch in the rear right corner, formerly leading to the cellar. Remains of a quartered 16th-century ceiling survive, retaining some moulding to the beams and foliate carving to the cross; the position of the central boss is plain. Mid-18th-century dentilled cornicing appears in the entrance passage. The rear range includes early 19th-century features, including an open-string, open-well staircase with stick balusters.

Number 39's ground-floor front room contains a heavily chamfered cross-beam and early 18th-century raised and fielded panelling with a boxed cornice, together with an early 19th-century white marble fireplace with cast-iron grate. The rear room has a massive heavily chamfered cross-beam and a large chimney-breast with a small 18th-century stone fireplace. To the rear right stands an early 19th-century open-well, open-string staircase with turned newels. A 17th-century collar-truss roof crowns the structure. A chimney-piece with flanking pilasters and bolection-moulded overmantel was noted in the 1978 description but has not been seen, and was probably removed during the 1992 building work.

The yard of Number 39 is enclosed by a Flemish bond red brick wall approximately 20 metres long and three metres high with stone coping. At the end is a blocked freestone architrave to a former door, possibly opening to a service block.

The building was formerly known as The Bell Inn, mentioned in the Tropenel cartulary of 1320. By 1672 it belonged to Adam Farnewell alias Goldney. The premises had been divided into two separate occupancies by 1727, and by 1750 it had ceased to function as an inn. The building represents an important survival of a late medieval town house, remodelled during the late 17th century as a fine town house with an early centralised plan and symmetrical façade.