135, High Street

House in row with shop at 135 High Street, Tewkesbury. The building dates to the 16th century, with significant remodelling in the late 17th century. It is constructed with timber-frame and plaster panels, tile roof, and brick chimneys.

The building forms a treble-jettied, hipped range on a double-depth right-angle plan, with stair and chimney breast positioned at the party wall on the left at the back. The top floor has slightly different framing from the remainder and is said to be a replacement of a former cock-loft.

The exterior comprises four storeys and a basement, with a frontage of two windows. The second and third floors have 3-light casements with a horizontal bar set in slightly raised moulded mullions and frame, including cill. The first floor sits beneath a moulded bressumer with brattished top and features a wide 1:6:1-light canted oriel with transom. The ground floor contains a full-width 5-light shop front with a recessed central door, pilasters, and consoles, finished with a plain fascia and moulded cornice carrying decorative cast-iron cresting. The upper floors display close stud and mid-rail framing, with the top floor incorporating decorative serpentine bracing. The eaves are finished with dentils and a concealed gutter.

The interior at ground floor level has been opened up with a large rear extension, though the party walls retain heavy stud framing, and to the right one very large brace is exposed. Regular large haunched posts with chamfered beams are visible. Beneath the shop front is a heavy bressumer on a post with a decorative jetty-bracket to the right (that to the left is concealed by later fittings). A wooden stair to the probably 16th-century cellar is located at the back left. The cellar has stone in the party walls and main rear wall; the front wall features a long adit ascending two stone steps to pavement access. The right party wall displays arched brick bins covering flat pointed brick arches to the inner wall, with a central large chamfered beam. The chimney stack in the back left corner is carried on a corbelled flat squinch.

The staircase rises through a heavily framed compartment for three floors before crossing to the opposite side for the top floor. It is a 17th-century dogleg design in polished oak with twisted balusters, square newels, and a solid moulded string. The first-floor front is a fully panelled room, some original 17th-century including the frieze, and some of late 19th-century date. The fireplace is in the back left corner, with one broad chamfered and stopped beam on panelled posts. Wide floorboards remain, and two slender cast-iron 'Batty Langley' columns have been inserted in the oriel window. The second floor features a cut-down door with six linen-fold panels in early framing. The diagonal fireplace has an 18th-century surround with pulvinated frieze and moulded mantel; the inset includes a series of Delft tiles. Close-spaced chamfered beams on haunched posts are present, and the party wall to the left shows close-stud framing at the front with square panel framing for the major part. The third floor is open to the roof, which retains framing from the original building to which the hipped unit has been added on one purlin. A propped central beam serves as the purlin to the original roof, with an access hatch at the ridge. The framing of the original gables is exposed, with a blocked 2-light casement on the north side and a small light to the south overlooking adjoining roofs.

This is a fine 16th-century merchant's house. The position of the staircase, characteristic of mid and later 17th-century town house plans elsewhere (such as the Llandoger Trow in Bristol), suggests the interior was replanned during the late 17th-century remodelling.