39 Cross Street

No. 39 Cross Street (together with Nos. 37-38)

A rendered and painted street elevation with natural slate roof, concealing red sandstone rubble walling visible at the rear. The building comprises a single-depth range with gabled cross-wings at either end and two small rear wings behind the centre range, plus a 20th-century single-storey extension covering the whole ground floor.

The street elevation is five bays (4 + 1), with the end bay forming a projecting gabled wing. From the left: Bay 1 has a late 19th-century shop or pub frontage (documented in 1913) with a 2-over-2 pane sash window with four additional small lights in the upper sash. Bay 2 contains a 6-panel door with a small pediment above it (probably 18th century, shown in 1913), and a sash window above of the same type as Bay 1, with a small iron balconette (shown in 1913). Bays 3 and 4 feature another late 19th-century shop or pub frontage, now divided into two shops (shown in 1913), with sash windows above; the left-hand window is post-1913. Bay 5 is the least altered from the 18th century, with a 4-by-4 pane shop window and small doorway to the right, as shown in 19th-century photographs, with a 2-over-2 pane sash and balconette above, and small attic window in the gable; the joinery has been replaced. The gable has plain bargeboards. An early 18th-century modillion eaves cornice runs along the central bays. The steeply pitched roof has a large truncated chimney stack between Bay 1 and No. 40, and a smaller one between Bays 3 and 4. A matching large stack between Bay 5 and No. 6, visible in historical photographs, was removed in the late 20th century, leaving a scar in the slating.

The rear elevation reveals random local red sandstone rubble walling above a 20th-century single-storey flat-roofed rendered extension. No. 37 has a blocked window on the left and a cross-framed casement on the right, with evidence of a recently removed chimney stack in the slating. No. 38 has two cross-framed casements, one in a gabled wing with a small attic casement above. No. 39 has similar casements with a slightly larger gable containing the main stair. The antiquity of these casement windows is uncertain.

The ground floor has been heavily altered, having comprised three separate properties for at least two hundred years. Nos. 37 and 38 have all historic features hidden behind modern cladding, heavily disguising the early planning. No. 39 has a compartmented ceiling with deep roll-moulded beams in what was presumably the hall; any remains of the fireplace are covered over. The upper floors are accessed from the rear of this room via an added spiral oak staircase. This staircase includes a window embrasure now blocked, which may suggest that No. 40 was added or extended subsequently.

The first room at the head of the stairs has a richly decorated plaster ceiling of mid-17th-century date, which has clearly been plastered over the existing deeply roll-moulded ceiling beams still visible in the room below. The plaster ceiling has its main beams and subsidiary framing bands enriched with vine trails. Within the rectangular fields created, there is a repeated pattern of four winged cherubim heads. The doorway leading from this room is moulded and stopped with a 4-centred head; one jamb of a similar doorway survives at the other end of the passage. The other rooms have moulded plaster cornices surviving in part but are otherwise plain. Much of the joinery is early 20th century and part of a Foster repair, though several older doors survive, considerable quantities of old floorboards remain, along with a small Victorian fireplace and some chamfered beams; one rear window has moulded plaster reveals.

The roof is a single space with six principal rafter trusses set into the tops of the walls, a late upper cruck type. Two of these trusses are heavier than the others and may be older. The roof as now exists, with its relatively light timbers, staggered purlins and improperly jointed ties, suggests an early 18th-century date and may have been replaced after a fire with some old timbers reused, or may result from later alterations to the building. Some heavier purlins show cuts made for the addition of the gables, particularly evident at the head of the staircase.