17, Ford Street

No. 17 Ford Street is a house with shop, located on the south side of Ford Street in Moretonhampstead. It dates from the late 15th or early 16th century, with significant alterations in the late 16th or early 17th century, the 18th century, and the 19th century.

The building is constructed of granite rubble with a roughcast front. The end stack is dressed granite with later brick shafts. A rendered brick rear wing with bitumen-coated slate roof was added in the 19th century. The main roof is thatched with gabled ends abutting adjoining buildings.

The original plan was probably a 3-room-and-through-passage arrangement with an open hall and lower end, likely divided by low screens, though it is uncertain whether the higher end was originally open to the roof. In the late 16th or early 17th century, an axial stack was inserted at the lower end of the hall, backing onto the passage, and the hall was floored over. In the early 19th century, the lower end was remodelled or rebuilt to form a separate house (No. 15). In the late 19th century, the hall was divided into two rooms, with a shop inserted in the front room. A shop front with bead moulding was inserted at ground floor level, featuring a 3-light casement window and integral half-glazed door. The domestic entrance to the rear room was created from a doorway in the former passage, which is now a carriageway to the left. A rear service room in a 2-storey wing was probably added at some stage.

The building is two storeys and two windows wide. The upper floor has late 18th or early 19th-century 2-light windows with glazing bars and centre light casements on original hinges. The ground floor right-hand window's centre light has been replaced. The ground floor left contains the late 19th-century shop front.

Inside the carriageway to the left is a fine granite ashlar back to the stack, featuring a chamfered cornice and plinth, which originally backed onto the through-passage. To the side of the stack is a board partition with an 18th-century door with 2 fielded panels, which serves as the main entrance to the house.

The interior contains significant medieval fabric. Access to the roof is only available from No. 15, so only one truss is visible in the roof space. This truss is smoke-blackened on its lower side against the hall stack. The principals are probably jointed crucks with a morticed apex, cut for a diagonal ridge and with a triangular block in the apex angle. There is a morticed cambered collar, which has been cut in half, and threaded purlins. The thatch over the hall also appears to be smoke-blackened, and the hall stack has thatch weatherings. A cruck, probably jointed, forms a closed truss over the upper end of the hall.

The hall is one bay with a relatively large inner room. A plank and muntin screen at the higher end of the hall features chamfered muntins with high run-out stops and wide planks. Longitudinal hall ceiling beams with hollow step stops rest on the projecting head beam of the screen, which is plastered over. There are also 2 chamfered half-beams, one at the front and one against the rear wall, each with a hollow step stop. A blocked fireplace exists at the lower end of the hall. An 18th or early 19th-century framed stair was inserted into the back of the hall, and an 18th-century 2-panel door is located on the first floor.

This is a late Medieval house with much surviving original fabric and an interesting sequence of later development. The last changes occurred in the 19th century, and the building has remained remarkably unaltered since then, both externally and internally. It is one of the earliest buildings in Moretonhampstead and one of only 4 or 5 with Medieval smoke-blackened roof timbers. Surviving Medieval roofs are rare in towns.