76, High Street

This is a house, dating from the 15th century, which was refronted in the 17th century, with a rear wing added in the late 16th or early 17th century. It has been converted into flats and contains a shop on the ground floor. The front is rendered with lines imitating ashlar masonry, and the roof is covered with Welsh slate, featuring coped attic gables.

The building has an L-shaped plan, originally including a probable 15th-century open hall that ran parallel to the street. A doorway to the former service area on the right-hand side has been blocked off, and is now part of an adjacent property.

The front of the building presents two storeys with attics, and two bays. The ground floor currently has a 20th-century shop front with panelled end pilasters and brackets supporting a shutter box. There are recessed doorways either side of the shop front. A three-light display window sits centrally. Above, on the first floor, bay 1 has a plain sash window with a small hipped slate roof. Bay 2 features a four-light stone mullioned window with chamfered mullions set within deep, chamfered reveals and a stone label. Matching two-light windows are found in the two attic gables.

Inside, the building is divided into three sections. The front section has been altered at ground floor level for the shop, but the first floor retains a 17th-century mullioned window with ovolo mouldings on the interior. The smoke-blackened roof frame includes parts of two trusses, one of which is a two-tier cruck, incorporating a tenoned purlin and sockets for a windbrace. A blocked doorway with a chamfered 2-centred arched head is visible on the right.

The middle section of the shop contains a crossbeam with composite mouldings, a fireplace opening with a 20th-century arch, and a door arch with a chamfer in the rear wall. The roof over this area is not smoke-blackened and features a collar truss with tenon chamfered with run-out stops and a side trench ridge to which the rafters are pegged.

The rear room has a wide, cambered-arched fireplace and shares the same roof as the middle section. This building is considered a rare and important survival of an early stone-detailed front on the High Street.