100, Church Street

This is a remarkably well-preserved 17th-century house in a row, situated on Church Street in Tewkesbury. The building includes a shop, and it is dated 1664 – “B R R 1664” – carved above the left-hand door. The front of the house features a close-studded timber frame with plaster infill, while elsewhere there is braced box framing. It has tile roofs and brick stacks. The building has a side-entry, right-angle plan.

The exterior is largely unaltered above the ground floor, presenting three storeys with a double jetty. A prominent feature is the wide, central canted oriel windows that extend across the front and are set beneath a hipped roof. The first and second floors have full-width windows with ovolo-mould mullions and transoms, all with leaded glass in 14 lights. A modern shop front occupies the ground floor, incorporating a glazed door. To the left of the shop front is an original wide plank door with a carved, cambered head and decorative detail. Deep scrolled brackets support the jetties at each floor, and wide eaves overhang on brackets. A central brick stack is located at the rear. A panelling and glazed door leads to a throughway on the right. A gabled wing with an incorporated dovecote is situated at the rear, and to its left is a deeper, lower wing, both constructed with brick-nogged framing.

The interior ground floor has been altered, but the principal front rooms on the first and second floors retain original floorboards and 3-compartment ceilings supported by heavy, moulded or chamfered beams. The first floor includes a central turned 'baluster' prop supporting a transverse beam. These rooms also have projecting square rendered brick fireplaces with moulded plaster cornices positioned below the ceiling level; the second floor fireplace has a peaked wood bressumer, modified on the first floor. A tight winder stair descends from the second floor to the right of the fireplace. The later main stair is an open-well winder located in the back wing. A lower wing, with floor levels below those of the main block, has a four-light early casement facing west. The roof space also retains wide early boards, light propped framing to a single purlin, and two cropped stacks adjacent to the stair head, which rises to roof level. The basement is not accessible.

The building is an exceptionally fine example of a 17th-century timber-framed facade. Its proportions, with deep eaves and a hipped roof, reflect the influence of Dutch-inspired classicism prevalent in the mid-17th century. The rear wing may represent the surviving remnant of an earlier property, though no evidence to support this was noted. At the time of a survey in August 1991, the building was empty and in very poor structural condition.