18 High Street

18 High Street is a striking urban building that dates back to at least the early 17th century. Originally, this site housed a poor tenement known as Chelsea Barracks. The unusual design and detailing of the building suggest it may have been intended for institutional use, but it now functions as a pair of private houses.

The exterior features rough local limestone rubble with a slate roof supported by a modillion eaves cornice and brick gable end axial stacks. The building stands three storeys high and has a four-window range, with a passage entrance located to the right of the centre. Number 17 is accessed from this passage, while the doorway to Number 18 is positioned at the far right, which disrupts the otherwise regular alignment of openings. There is a disused passage entry that corresponds to Number 17. The doors are incised 8-panel designs with overlights, framed by an architrave featuring a raised diamond motif in the entablature, and mutules under the cornice hood. The round-arched passage entry leads to wide three-light mullioned and transomed windows with small panes and cambered stone voussoir heads on the ground and first floors, along with similar lower mullioned windows in the attic storey.

Inside Number 17, there is a steep early 19th-century staircase running up the centre of the house. Each floor has two rooms at the front (the first-floor rooms have been modified to create one large space) and a large and a small room at the rear. Access to these rooms is directly off the staircase, which is an unusual arrangement; the small rear room and the upper front room are reached via a small landing, while the rear large room is accessed through a secondary flight of stairs. The second front room can only be reached through the first front room. The roof truss is of an unusual type, featuring a king-post with chamfered joints and two pairs of braces that are cross-braced to both the king-post and the tie-beam.