30 And 32, Church Street

Two attached houses on Church Street, dating from the 15th and 16th centuries, with remodelling in the 17th and 18th centuries. The houses are timber-framed, partially faced with painted brick and featuring a plat-band; the right-hand gable is plastered. The roof is covered in clay plain tiles with gabled ends, and there are brick axial, gable-end, and lateral stacks.

Number 30, on the left, is originally of three bays. The right-hand two bays were initially an open hall, originally with a closed truss separating the hall from the left bay, and remnants of a further bay truncated when the two-bay cross-wing (number 32) was added in the 16th century. In the early 17th century, a floor and axial stack were inserted into the hall, and the front of the house was faced with brick in the early 18th century.

The exterior presents an asymmetrical five-window front. The ground floor features two 12-pane sashes with thick glazing bars on the left, a six-panel door, three-light mullion-transom windows with iron casements, and a small 20th-century shop window. The first floor has two cross-mullion-transom windows in hipped half-dormers, and two and three-light casements. The rear exhibits a gable-ended cross-wing projecting on the left, a small gable, and a gabled dormer on the right, with some exposed timber-framing to the right of the cross-wing.

Inside number 30, the main hall range has a chamfered axial beam with pyramid stops and a fireplace with an elliptical brick arch in the former hall. There is 18th-century joinery, including panelled doors and cupboards, a china cupboard with shaped shelves, and a moulded plank door. The roof has three bays, with two smoke-blackened hall bays featuring an arch-braced truss, clasped purlins, and common-rafter couples, all smoke-blackened. The truncated right-hand bay displays smoke-blackened purlin ends. Number 32’s two-bay cross-wing has an ogee-headed doorway on the left side and a cambered bressummer between the front and back ground-floor rooms. The cross-wing roof includes a collar and tie-beam truss with curved queen-struts, clasped purlins, curved wind-braces, and common-rafter couples, lightly smoke-blackened, possibly due to smoke drifting from the open hall, which remained open for a period after the cross-wing was added.