Building record NYW 079 - Butchers, 5 Bear Street

Butchers is a timber-framed urban merchant’s house of the mid-16th century with a continuously jettied street façade. Until its closure in 1958 the property was a Public House known as the Butchers’ Arms. The building contains a hall and parlour, both with exceptional carved and painted ceilings, but lacks the service rooms normally found in buildings of this type. Until its complete reconstruction in 2005 the left-hand gable contained evidence of at least one original doorway that proved the house initially continued further and possessed service rooms in the usual position. The renewal of the gable has removed this evidence of the building’s 16th century layout, along with a substantial quantity of historic fabric. The new framing incorporates primary bracing in the fashion of the late-17th and 18th centuries and is both visually and historically different from the original. The reconstruction has therefore reduced the historic integrity and value of the house to a very significant degree (S1).