Grasshoppers The Stores

This is a pair of shops with accommodation above and a house, dating back to the 18th century and refurbished in the 19th century. The building is constructed of plastered cob on stone rubble footings, with stone rubble or brick stacks topped with 19th and 20th-century brick, and a slate roof.

The building faces west onto High Street, with No. 14, The Stores, on the right and No. 16, Grasshoppers, on the left. No. 14 comprises a shop with a room above, and a two-room plan house at the southern end with a central staircase. The left room of the house has a rear lateral stack, and the right room has an end stack. No. 16 originally had a two-room plan but the ground floor rooms have been combined to create a tea shop; the larger room to the right has a rear lateral stack. The staircase rises against the rear wall of the left room.

The front of Grasshoppers has a near-symmetrical facade with 19th and 20th-century replacement casement windows with glazing bars, and a central part-glazed 20th-century door. The house at the right end has a balanced but not symmetrical front with 19th and 20th-century casements with glazing bars, and a central 19th-century six-panel door, the top two panels now glazed. The shop in The Stores has a projecting bay window with a late 19th/early 20th-century entablature, though the glazing has been replaced. A part-glazed door occupies the centre, over which sits a small 16-pane sash window with a valance above, and a small casement to the right.

Interiors show mostly 19th-century joinery and features. However, the shop in The Stores and the room to its right retain axial beams with broad, neat soffit chamfers without stops, suggesting they are of 18th or late 17th-century origin. The roof is constructed with A-frame trusses, featuring iron-spiked lap-jointed collars and cross-apexes.

The Stores and Grasshoppers are part of a group of attractive and varied buildings lining High Street toward the Church of All Saints.