9, St Thomas Street

This is a late 16th-century house, with later alterations, located on St Thomas Street. The exterior is built of local stone rubble with Doulting stone dressings around the doorway, and has a clay pantiled roof between coped gables, along with brick end chimney stacks.

The house has a two-unit central entry plan and is two storeys high with an attic. The front has two wide bays. The ground floor features two almost square bay windows with 4+24+4 panes, under a continuous lean-to roof covered with Welsh slates. Between the windows is a 4-centred chamfered arch containing a boarded door with strap hinges, possibly dating back to the 16th century. The first floor has two 3-light casement windows, each with 15 panes per light.

The ground floor room on the left has a wide stone fireplace with a chamfered surround, a deep lintel supporting a carved inscription, which is an 18th-century Rupert Brooke quotation, a dado panel, and a central boxed beam. The room to the right, incorporating the former cross-passage, includes a shell cupboard, a 17th-century door, and a 18th-century 2-panel door leading to a timber winder staircase. The staircase has a cupboard with fielded panels in a former window recess at the quarter turn.

The first floor has chamfered beams. The room to the right is said to contain a “priests' hole” to the right of the former fireplace, which may have been the location of a former staircase. A tight wooden spiral stair rises to the attic, which contains one very thin 17th-century moulded plank door on strap hinges.

The roof has heavy, worn principals and one purlin. At the west end are 4 bays, with chamfered purlins below a later roof structure. The house displays characteristics typical of many properties on St Thomas Street, being a combination of different building phases over time.