43 And 44, Newport Road

Two adjoining houses, originally one, built in the mid-16th century and altered later. The houses are constructed with rendered mass wall construction and have a slate roof with gabled ends. A front lateral chimney stack has a rendered shaft, and cast-iron rainwater goods are present. The original plan was likely a three-room-and-through-passage configuration. The hall, located on the left-hand side (No. 43), was truncated and a room is missing, and there's a possibility it originally had an open hall. A staircase now rises to the rear of the hall. On the lower end of No. 43, there’s a small, unheated room, likely a buttery, and a larger room, probably the former kitchen, is located in No. 44, but it was inaccessible at the time of the survey.

The asymmetrical facade has a six-window arrangement. No. 43 has a front door to the right of the lateral stack, with a chamfered oak surround. To its right is a canted ground-floor bay with a 12-pane sash window in the centre and 8-pane sash windows in the side lights, all covered by a deep slate pentice. A small-pane window is located to the left of the stack. Three 12-pane sash windows are on the first floor. No. 44 has a central front door with glazed panels, and a projecting porch hood. A canted bay with projecting cornice and fixed windows with glazing bars protrudes on the ground floor on the right. Other windows have been replaced with plastic.

Inside No. 43, historic features remain, including plank and muntin screens on either side of the entrance passage and a third screen along the party wall with No. 44. The left-hand partition was likely formerly timber. A fireplace with a replaced lintel shows evidence of a former bread oven, and there are chamfered stop-chamfered spine beams with run-out stops. A reused door jamb on the first floor is marked with complex carpenters' marks. The roof construction includes probable 16th-century trusses with steeply cambered collars and straight principal rafters; the apex was not visible. It's unclear if the trusses are sooted.

This building is an important historic structure in the old centre of Newport.