Building record TAT 036 - 30 & 31 Church Road

30 & 31 Church Road form a pair of single storied grade II-listed timber-framed and thatched cottages. They were built by parish officers in the late-17th or early-18th century as a row of four almhouses for the accomodation of poor families. Much of the timber was re-used from a high-status structures of the late-15th or early-16th cenutry that may. Given the site's location and parish ownership, have been a religious guildhall. Each original tenement appears to have contained a single heated room of one square perch on the ground storey with a chamber in the roof space above, but extensive alterations of the 20th century have obscured most of the historic fabric. The original roof was a simple clasped-purlinstructure with plastered re-used rafters, but was largely rebuilt in recent years which occasioned the abandonment of the entire upper storey. Despite these alterations the building's external profile is largely unchanged and it represents a rare and historically important survival (S1).