66 Westgate Street

This is a former merchant's house dating from the mid-15th century, with significant alterations from the 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries, and later repairs in the late 20th and early 21st centuries.

The house is constructed of an oak timber-frame, with a stuccoed principal elevation, and a plain clay tile roof. It is two bays deep and consists of two parallel, gable-end bays.

The exterior is a three-storey building with a cellar, presenting a symmetrical, two-gabled principal elevation. The building has a jettied first and second floor. The ground floor features a late 19th-century shopfront with slender cast-iron framing and original 19th-century plate-glass windows, flanking a recessed doorway. Pilasters form the sides of the shopfront, and console brackets support the cornice. The first floor displays timber-framed bays with upright posts, an intermediate rail, and straight tension braces, the feet of which are hidden by the shopfront's cornice. The braces and intermediate rail were cut to accommodate four late 19th-century metal-framed six-over-six sash windows. The second floor has a jetty with close-studding above, now mostly concealed by stucco; this is a mid-16th-century remodelling of the original house, featuring a pair of 18th-century two-light casement windows, each with 12 panes. Both gables are finished with moulded bargeboards, painted with trefoils, and incorporate stucco date plaques for 1450 and 2009.

The interior retains much of the original timber framing, including partition walls to the upper floors, some with evidence of 18th-century floral wall paintings. A 17th or 18th-century dog-leg staircase is located to the rear, between the first and second floors. The second floor is open to the roof, which consists of trusses with principal rafters, tie beams, collars, and vertical struts. Curved wind braces connect the principal rafters to clasped purlins. The cellar has rubble walls with later brick insertions, and is believed to contain a large bread oven.