88, High Street

This is a house, dating from the 17th century, with later additions and alterations including a late 18th-century structure resembling a chapel. It is now used as commercial premises. The original timber-frame, once filled with wattle and daub, is now stuccoed at the front, with incised detailing to resemble ashlar, and painted. The rear has applied timber framing dating from the early 20th century. The roof is tiled, and brick stacks are located at the left end and near the right end of the ridge.

The house is two storeys high with a cellar. It has two framed bays with two gabled rear additions and one half-gabled rear addition. The windows are 20th-century leaded casements, those at the front being cross-windows and set under console-bracketed cornices. A painted plinth and moulded band run along the front, with eaves bands featuring paired brackets surrounding boxed eaves. A stone step leads to the main entrance, which has a plastered surround with pilasters, a frieze, bracketed cornice and a part-glazed, moulded panelled door. An oculus is positioned within the architrave above the door, and there are two windows of different sizes on each floor to the left, with a recessed panel containing a window on the first floor. Inside, a narrow passage entrance reveals the front and rear corner wall posts and the rear wall-plate.

The interior contains large-scantling chamfered beams, some with lambs-tongue stops, original cellar joists and a 17th-century roof structure with queen post trusses, originally with central posts below, and clasped purlins. Pegged morticed and tenoned rafters are marked with the carpenter's numerals.

The cellar is reputed to have been used as a Roman Catholic chapel between 1770 and 1830. It features a shallow rectangular recess below the pavement with a plastered vault and pointed-arched side recesses, raised surrounds, groins, bosses and strapwork. A small panel with an illegible painted inscription is found in each side recess, along with a low brick and timber plinth/bench running around the recess, and a timber bressumer supported on plastered brickwork. A print from 1812 depicts the basement as a chapel. It is suggested the chapel might have been constructed as a folly or a dining den due to the limited evidence of a Catholic congregation in Marlow prior to 1845.