Number 61 And Attached Rear Garden Walls

House, now offices, dating from 1702 (deed). Located on the north side of St Mary Street in Chippenham.

The building presents a stone ashlar facade with rubblestone elsewhere and a distinctive Flemish-bond brick turret with burnt headers, freestone quoins and dressings, and a hipped slate roof. The main block has a stone slate double-pitched roof with lateral brick stacks rising to the valley.

The plan follows a double-depth central-entry through-passage arrangement with a turret to the rear left and a projecting 19th-century first-floor closet on cast-iron columns to the centre of the rear landing. A 20th-century rear extension has been added.

The exterior comprises two storeys with attic and cellar. The symmetrical five-window facade features a moulded cornice, sills to the first floor, and a sill string course to the ground floor, with chamfered rusticated quoins. The central bay projects slightly under a small pediment centring the cornice. The painted stone doorcase is similarly pediment-topped on scroll brackets at string course level, with a tall cyma-moulded architrave, a 19th-century six-panel door, and an overlight with coloured triangular panes. The first-floor windows are six-over-six-pane painted sashes; the ground floor has plate-glass sashes. The rear contains various 18th and 19th-century windows.

The interior features a thick central axial wall (almost 1 metre) accommodating stacks rising from the roof valley. The most complete space is the front ground-floor left room, with full-height painted pine panelling, fine box cornice, and a white marble fireplace (probably mid to late 18th century) to the centre of the rear wall. The fireplace surround features a narrow horizontal panel of grained wood or plaster with richly raised rococo moulding and an animal motif. Above sits a raised panel with bolection moulding. The room has thick skirting boards with returned mouldings, raised-and-fielded panelling to window shutters, an eight-panel door, and soffits and backs of depressed pointed-arched recesses flanking the fireplace. The left recess contains a door to the rear kitchen. Wide pine floorboards complete the scheme.

The front ground-floor right room, formerly similar, now has a late 19th-century ornamented cornice and ceiling rose. Arched recesses flank a mid-19th-century white marble fireplace with anthemion motifs to the corners; the original eight-panel door is glazed to the centre. 19th-century high skirting boards are present.

The central entry hall contains late 19th-century polychromatic tiles. A semicircular arch through the thick central wall features a moulded keystone and archivolt, panelled fronts and soffits, and fluted returns.

The ground-floor rear right room, formerly a kitchen, has a stone Tudor-arched surround and timber overmantel and cornice to an open fire against the central wall. Two plastered chamfered crossbeams with run-out stops remain, along with a 19th-century dresser to the left-hand wall still on a flagstone base. A mid-19th-century eight-over-eight-pane sash window lights the space.

The open-well, open-string staircase has a swept skirting, fretted ends, and what are probably 20th-century thin turned balusters and newel with a wreathed handrail. Raised-and-fielded panelling runs below and to a four-panel cellar door. The richly-moulded stairwell cornice features egg-and-dart moulding to the base. First-floor doors are six-panel.

The first-floor front right room is partitioned. Its rear wall has a returned cyma-moulded cornice to full-height raised-and-fielded panelling with cupboards, flanking an early 19th-century fireplace.

The first-floor rear right room contains two boxed-in cross beams and, in the rear left corner, steps down to a small closet in the brick turret with thick glazing bars to a nine-over-nine-pane sash window. The rear first-floor closet has painted-over margin panes flanking a 20th-century door.

To the centre front of the landing between the rooms are two cupboards, one with a four-panel door containing winding stairs with oak treads to the extensive attics.

Both ranges feature four-bay collar-truss roofs with a central roof connecting front and rear ranges. Some tenoned purlins are rough, implying others are later; the collars are nailed. The wide boards, partly covered, are oak or elm.

The cellar is approached by stone steps under the stairs. A narrow barrel-vaulted tunnel leads to a vaulted area under the front right-hand room. Some original shelves and a cupboard remain against the right-hand wall.

The rear garden is now occupied by a 20th-century extension but is enclosed by a stone-coped brick wall in English Garden Wall bond attached to the rear. To the right is a substantial retaining wall approximately 40 metres long, which sweeps up toward the end with a door and steps to land outside approximately 2 metres lower.

The facade design is similar to No. 19 on St Mary Street.