36 Main Street

36 Main Street is a two-storey house with basement and attic, standing on a sloping site. It has a painted stuccoed front and steep slate roof. A rendered chimney, raised in brick, stands at the left end; the right end chimney is missing.

The four-bay front elevation displays varied fenestration. From left to right on the ground floor: a sash window, a 19th-century canted bay window with slate roof, a six-panel door with rectangular overlight, and a late 19th to early 20th-century shop front with common fascia and cornice. The shop front comprises a recessed half-glazed panelled door with rectangular overlight and a slightly projecting three-sided shop window (left side canted, right side straight). The first floor has three sash windows to the left aligned with the window below, and one to the right. The sashes are four-pane horned sashes except the second window, which is possibly early 18th-century and plastered over. Three gabled 19th-century dormers contain four-pane sashes and bargeboards.

The rear left wall is windowless and rough rendered. A back door opens into a 19th-century lean-to, with a toilet to the left of the porch.

A north-west rear wing is set lower on the ground floor due to the sloping site. This rubble stone structure has a gabled roof that collapsed in the later 20th century and was being replaced in 2004. It has two windows and one door on the first floor to the east, two windows to the first floor north, and one window each side of the chimneybreast.

Interior: The entrance leads to a rear door passage. The principal room to the right was formerly the shop; the hall lies to the left with a small front room partitioned to the south. The stair opens through the back wall into the rear wing to the north. A narrow west end room has cellar stairs in the corner. Four cased square-section beams span the ground floor.

The east room, the former shop, retains earlier to mid-18th-century fielded panelling on the west and north walls with long panels, dado rail, moulded skirting and timber cornice. The west partition wall has five panels and a doorway with a short panel above in the fourth section; a two-panel fielded-panelled door sits in a raised architrave. The north wall has four similar panels. The east wall has a central fireplace with a damaged moulded slate surround featuring pilasters and curved angles to the top piece. The timber surround has plain piers and a moulded cornice, the lower moulding broken forward over the piers and in the centre, with a thin shelf above. An shouldered overmantel panel rises above, its centre section covered in 20th-century plywood. A similar cornice is broken forward over the chimneybreast, with similar skirting each side beneath wall cupboards, mostly 19th-century but incorporating at the lowest level a pair of low fielded-panelled doors. Above are two rows of two drawers and then doubled 19th-century glazed doors to a shelved recess. The south entrance wall retains a 19th-century shop window with three glass doors on the back, and a door to the right, with a 19th-century small painted grained screen canted in at an angle to the left of the door. Thick pine floorboards cover the floor.

The hall has a plastered partition wall and two doors to the left: one small part-glazed 19th-century door into the centre room, and a larger doorway into the rear hall. 19th-century red and black floor tiles pave the hall. A north end exterior plank door with wrought-iron hinges opens outward.

The rear hall has the left half of a partition to the front centre room, similar fielded panelling over dado with moulded cornice. The doorway is missing and the right half destroyed, but the cornice survives. A two-panel fielded-panelled door opens in the west wall. An opening in the rear north wall gives access to the staircase up to the first floor of the rear wing.

The front centre room has a plain plastered arch over a 19th-century bay window to the right and a 19th-century wall cupboard to the left. The thin partition to the west room gives onto a slate-flagged floor, 19th-century small fireplace with 20th-century small range, and a partition with a blocked recess (probably a plate rack) to the right of the door, featuring curved upper angles. A three-sided partition in the north-east corner encloses the cellar stairs with a two-panel fielded-panelled door on the west and a small six-pane fixed window in the canted south-west angle, 18th-century with thick glazing bars. A small boarded ventilation door sits above the cellar door.

Nine stone steps descend to the cellar. Two rooms are separated by a very thick wall pierced by an opening with a cambered brick head. The east cellar contains an oak beam, probably reused, and two part-blocked basement lights in the north wall, one containing a piece of 18th-century sash window in the blocking. The cellar under the centre room has a joisted ceiling and access into the ground floor of the rear wing, which is lower than the front range due to the falling ground.

The rear wing ground floor has a large north wall fireplace with an altered lintel; a brick one was inserted, probably lower than the original. The left pier projects and is flat-topped. A full-height recess to the left of the fireplace has a slightly rounded pier projecting from the side wall, possibly an altered copper recess. On the right side, a 19th-century brick bowl for a former copper stands with a fireplace beneath, a later insertion, as a remnant of a former bread oven survives in the corner behind. The right side of the fireplace shows a broken line of stone indicating that the wall with the bread oven was cut away. A chute in the east side wall, perhaps for ashes, has an exterior doorway to the right. The floor has pine beams inserted in 2004. This floor has no access to the ground floor of the main house.

From the rear hall, an earlier to mid-18th-century stair rises to the first floor of the rear wing. Seven pine steps with a balustrade to the left, moulded rail, square panelled newels and turned column-type balusters. A second similar short flight returns through an opening in the back wall to the first floor of the front. This has a similar balustrade with a pulvinated closed string (balustrade on one side only). The stair opening shows signs of having been wider to the left above a sill.

The rear wing first floor has a small cemented fireplace at the north end and marks of lost roof trusses (three collar trusses, to be replaced in pine). The gable line is visible on the rear of the main range, with a small patch of slate-hanging to the right. A blocked door at the left of the west wall led into the rear wing of No. 34.

The first floor front has three rooms with two-panel fielded-panelled doors and a staircase up the back wall. Another two-panel door serves the under-stair. The east room has a later 18th-century simple wood chimneypiece with panelled piers, dentilled cornice and a later iron grate, flanked by cupboards with sunk panels to painted grained doors. The west room has a narrow fireplace with a later 19th-century grate set into a later 18th or early 19th-century wood surround. A window in the front wall is plastered over. The staircase has a long flight with similar detail to the two lower flights, a short return at the east end to the attic landing with 19th-century thin balusters. The attic contains earlier 20th-century sawn pine roof trusses.