117 AND 118, HIGH STREET

This is a house in a row, likely dating to the early 16th century or earlier, with a rear range added in the later 16th or 17th century. The building incorporates timber-frame construction with tension bracing to the ground floor, and has a tile roof with brick stacks.

The main range runs parallel to the street and is a long, front-plan structure with a lower cross wing to the front right. It originally featured very low ceiling heights, and may have begun as a hall-house with a solar cross-wing. A parallel range extends to the rear, with a gabled projecting wing on its right-hand side (rear left).

The front elevation is two storeys high, formerly with an attic. The main range presents a series of 13 small square lights, grouped between framing members, above a projecting 19th-century three-bay shop front. This shop front features slender cast-iron colonnettes supporting a fascia with a moulded cornice, partly concealed by later flat-arched aprons. A glazed door is recessed to the right. The gable end has braced large-panel framing, with a blocked two-light window in the gable above a 19th-century three-light casement with horizontal bars. A 20th-century shop front with a door to the right replaces what was once a throughway, now incorporated into the opened-up ground floor. A brick stack to the left has a diagonally set shaft, and a smaller stack rises from the right gable end, having been raised when the adjoining property at number 119 was built. Some scalloped ridge tiles are present. The rear displays sections in large-panel framing, including a large three-light casement at eaves, and a gable with braced framing. A later brick wing is attached to the right, with a glazed conservatory projecting around two sides.

The upper levels were not accessible at the time of listing, but the roof is understood to potentially provide information about the building’s original design. The ground floor is now open, but retains much of the original heavy timber framing, including posts, beams, and rafters, along with part of one cruck-like member. Various props made of recycled timbers are present where walls and partitions have been removed, and the original rear wall has been largely removed. Further investigation is needed to fully understand the building’s historical development.