40, Church Street

TEWKESBURY

SO8932 CHURCH STREET 859-1/6/105 (South side) 04/03/52 No.40

GV I

House in row. C15 or early C16, internally remodelled in late C16/early C17, with early C19 frontage. Braced box timber-framing, Flemish bond brick front, tile roof, brick stack. PLAN: single room to street with left-hand rear stair and narrower rear hall, with a right-hand through passage. Part of the long terrace Nos 39-51 (qv), retaining most of the early fabric, but refronted in the C19, and left thus at the substantial refurbishment of the row in the late 1960s. EXTERIOR: front is 3 storeys and basement, 2-windowed. 12-pane to second floor above 16-pane to first and ground floors, all to V-joint voussoirs and stone cills. Far right is 6-panel door under transom light, to voussoirs as windows. Grille to basement, left, 3-course brick string above ground floor, coped parapet. Remainder of property framed, with 2 full-height narrow gables to back, including raking dormer facing south. Ridge stack and an external gable stack, the latter having a Tudor-arched doorway on the left-hand side with a ribbed door, and a C17 four-light window to the left return with ovolo mouldings. INTERIOR: details include square-framed side walls with diagonal braces; the front section, formerly with 2 gables to the street, has a 2-bay collar truss roof with clasped purlins and wind braces front and rear, common rafters and no ridge piece, the right-hand roof has a cut tie beam, partly restored c1970; on the first floor an early C17 flat-arched stone fire surround with ovolo and cavetto moulding to cyma stops, with painted left-hand splay, and rear window with a C17 metal frame with turn buckle and draw handle; a brick-lined cellar with rear flight of steps up. Rear hall has exposed framing, with inserted first-floor with 3 lateral and axial bridging beams with wide chamfers forming a coffered ground-floor ceiling, and C17 Tudor-arched ground-floor fire surround, moulded as front. A winder stair from ground floor has possible blocked window recess to ground-floor left-hand wall, and rear lateral stair flight to the attic. Of outstanding interest as part of a most important surviving example of a medieval terrace, built as a speculative development for the Abbey.

Listing NGR: SO8908632536