14, Crown Street Banham, England

Text courtesy of Historic England. © Crown Copyright, reprinted under the Open Government License.

BANHAM

84/0/10018 CROWN STREET 01-NOV-06 14

II DESCRIPTION: House. c.1630 with later C18 rebuilding and raising of south end. Mid C19 facing added to front. Timber frame, plastered and whitewashed to south end and rear, and polychromatic brick facing to front. Pantile roof with ridge and right end stacks. 3-bay cross-passage plan with the low end probably originally a single storey which was rebuilt and raised to 2 storeys later C18 re-using elements of the original frame. 2 storeys. The house is incorporated within a terrace of 3 houses (the others not included) with an uninterrupted mid C19 decorative brick facing of red brick with white brick dressings to windows, door and quoins and 3 horizontal bands of single courses of white brick. 3-window range at first floor of 3-light mullion windows with metal casements, 3 windows also on ground floor of 3-light mullion and transom casements and 4-panel door corresponding to the former screens passage. South (right) gable end now forms the side of vehicle entrance but was originally exposed and has an external stack, probably C18, with sloping set-offs. Rear has small C19 lean-to extension of brick and flint to northern end and doorway with early C19 moulded doorcase with corner paterae which corresponds to the through-passage. There are also casement windows. Within the extension the external wall of the timber frame is visible and suggests that the principal posts and possibly the mid-rail were originally exposed on the exterior rather than covered by plaster. This is because the original render with the exposed principal posts flush with the plaster can be seen within the roof space of the extension.

INTERIOR: There is close-studded timber framing visible together with transverse bridging beams. Stack with large bressumer. The stack was either rebuilt or partly rebuilt to add upper floor flues as it exceeds the defined bay in the frame and as a result one tie beam has been removed and the jowls of the principal posts cut back. North corners of frame with 'up' braces, former braces to tie beam and evidence of former 'up' braces to original south gable end. Edge-halved and bridled scarf joint to wall plates with long halvings. C20 straight stair in position of original winder stair to west side of stack. One diamond mullion window in parlour (north) chamber. Shutter rebates to hall (central) chamber windows. The upper part of the southernmost bay is an addition, probably of the C18, and probably re-using timbers from the original single-storey low-end bay because the ceiling joists on the ground floor are wide and flat, similar to those in the central bay. Blocked first-floor window opening in former south gable end shows that the south bay was originally single storey. C18 roof structure of wedge-tenoned staggered butt-purlins and mortised-and-tenoned collars.

SUMMARY OF IMPORTANCE. This is a C17 timber-framed house which has remained comparatively little altered with wall and ceiling framing and an open fireplace with bressumer. The raising of the original single-storey low end and rebuilding of the roof structure in the C18 is also of interest but the fine polychromatic brickwork of the uniform front leaves no external evidence of this survival from the street. An additional feature of interest is the survival of a small piece of the original external plastering finish. This suggests that the principal elements of the timber-frame were exposed to the exterior, contrary to the normal Norfolk practice of plastering over the frame on the exterior and leaving it exposed on the interior.