15, Sadler Street

WELLS

ST54NW SADLER STREET 662-1/7/226 (West side) 13/09/72 No.15

GV II

Offices, former house. C16 with C18 facade. Timber-framed, rendered, all colourwashed, underbuilt in brick at ground floor, clay pantiled roof, hipped to north end (right), behind high parapet; brick chimney stack on stone base. PLAN: the ground floor has been opened up, but was 2-room front, with major room back right, and staircase to the left; may have had a jettied front, underbuilt in C19. To the right the lower wall exposed in the carriageway to the adjoining building. EXTERIOR: 3 storeys, two wide bays. Shop front with fascia at relatively low level across front and short returns of building, moulded cornice, central half-glazed door in simple doorway, with plain 3-light window to left and 2-light to right, with thin mullions, the sills almost at ground level. First and second floors have 12-pane sash windows set flush, with timber architraves; parapet, clad with horizontal timber boarding has simple moulding below and as coping. The roof at the rear, also with pantiles, sweeps down, and there is a face dormer in coursed rubble, with a 2-light stone ovolo-mould casement, much distorted, to the staircase. INTERIOR: the ground floor, rear right, has remains of a C16 compartmental ceiling, with moulded beams on 3 sides, but with cross-beam removed, and cut away over a door on the N side. At first floor the front right room has a C16 chamfered beam papered over, and the adjoining room has a transverse beam across the partition; a C19 fireplace has Art Nouveau tile insets. Some lath and plaster is exposed in the front wall, and at the party walls remains of tie members to framing are partly exposed. The roof, only partly inspected, has heavy principals with saddle top, and 2 purlins. The small vertical scale of this early building is especially noticeable adjacent to the adjacent C19 rebuilding of No.13 (qv).

Listing NGR: ST5493145816