West Meon Village Shop, Riverside, And Old Post Office (Part)

West Meon Village Shop, Riverside, and Old Post Office (Part)

A four-bay 18th-century house with a 20th-century shop front added to the two eastern bays and a 19th-century gabled wing on the east end, constructed of brick, tile and slate. The plan of the 18th-century house is based on an axial corridor from which rooms are accessed to front and rear.

The 18th-century house is white painted Flemish bond brick on a brick plinth with a tile half-hipped roof and central axial chimney stack with four pots. It features 18th-century sashes to the ground floor and 19th-century casements to the first floor above a first floor brick band. A central stuccoed porch with chamfered corners, a concave leaded roof and six-panelled door (the upper two panels glazed) forms the main entrance. The shop front is glazed with a flat roof and corbelled eaves course. The 19th-century advanced gabled east wing in English bond brick has a slate roof with two ground floor and one first floor full-length windows with brick arches. The rear of the building is cement rendered except for a central extension to the rear of the 18th-century house, which is flint with brick dressings. All windows to the rear are modern casements. Two bays on the western side of the 18th-century house are in the ownership of the Old Post Office, which accounts for the listing address.

The interior of the 18th-century house comprises a modern shop occupying the ground floor of the two eastern bays and the ground floor of the east wing, with modernised living accommodation above. The shop is open plan but retains an earlier shop front within it. A brick cellar lies beneath the shop with modern floor joists in its ceiling. The original plan of the house remains visible in the two west ground floor bays and throughout the first floor, where a long axial corridor at the rear gives access to rooms opening off it. Only a few tie beams and purlins of the 18th-century house are visible as evidence of original construction. The roof has limited accessibility but appears from outside inspection to have remained intact. Few interior fixtures and fittings are of note, though tiling in the entrance hall within the porch, the staircase behind the porch and panelling on the staircase belong to 19th-century changes. The first floor room in the east wing shows the line of the purlins of this 19th-century addition.

The four-bay house known as Riverside is believed to date to the 18th century. It appears on maps of 1884 and 1896 but set further back from the road. An earlier shop front within the existing shop appears to correspond to this earlier position of the building's front. West Meon was an agricultural community with a population of 536 in 1801, constituting a fair-sized village for the period, peaking at 901 in 1851 before declining. The village shop likely dates from this period of growth.

The footprint of the building has changed considerably since its depiction on the 1884 Ordnance Survey map. On this map the 18th-century house is shown with a small extension to the front in the position of the later shop, possibly the first shop on the site. This extension was elongated by the 1896 edition map, by which time the wing had been added to the east end of the house along with minor changes to the rear. Some changes to the west end occurred by the 1909 edition, but the post office gable end was not yet shown and must be assumed to have been built after this date.