15, Sadler Street

No. 15 Sadler Street is a Grade II listed building located in Wells. This structure, originally a house, dates back to the 16th century, with an 18th-century facade. It features a timber-framed construction that is rendered and colorwashed, with a brick underbuilding at the ground floor and a clay pantiled roof that is hipped at the north end, behind a high parapet. A brick chimney stack sits on a stone base.

The ground floor has been opened up but was originally designed with two front rooms, a major room at the back right, and a staircase to the left. It may have had a jettied front, which was underbuilt in the 19th century. The lower wall is exposed in the carriageway to the adjoining building.

The exterior of the building has three storeys and two wide bays. It features a shop front with a fascia at a relatively low level across the front and short returns, a moulded cornice, and a central half-glazed door in a simple doorway. To the left is a plain three-light window, and to the right is a two-light window, both with thin mullions and sills that are almost at ground level. The first and second floors have 12-pane sash windows that are set flush, with timber architraves. The parapet is clad with horizontal timber boarding that has simple moulding below and as coping. The rear roof, also covered with pantiles, sweeps down and includes a face dormer made of coursed rubble, featuring a distorted two-light stone ovolo-mould casement window that serves the staircase.

Inside, the ground floor at the rear right retains remnants of a 16th-century compartmental ceiling, with moulded beams on three sides, although the cross-beam has been removed and the area over a door on the north side has been cut away. On the first floor, the front right room has a chamfered beam from the 16th century that is papered over, while the adjoining room has a transverse beam across the partition. A 19th-century fireplace features Art Nouveau tile insets. Some lath and plaster is exposed in the front wall, and remnants of tie members to the framing are partly visible at the party walls. The roof, which has only been partially inspected, includes heavy principals with saddle tops and two purlins. The small vertical scale of this early building is particularly noticeable when compared to the adjacent 19th-century rebuilding of No. 13.