19 Broad Street is a tucked away gem of surprising age – maybe even before1400!
This building has been featured in this walk to represent all the other, numerous buildings in this town that hide their true age behind the accretion of a number of ages. Look at it and you would assume late Victorian with a bit of 20th C modernisation – no such thing!
This surprisingly early building at the narrow end of the marketplace is one of the earlier examples of a temporary booth being replaced by a permanent building. Although a few lock up stalls still existed even into Victorian times, by the mid19th Century the Middle Row was largely filled with permanent buildings, although more pedestrian throughways existed than do today.
Grander buildings were hidden behind impressive Georgian frontages when the town was awash with money from the huge cattle fairs, ambitious Victorian traders updated their town centre premises - humbler buildings like No 19 show few signs of either their great age or later gentrification.
This modest house, in a group of those of similar age but tucked behind two early 20th C outbuildings, is in fact C15 or earlier. The central brick chimney stack, the painted brick skin (probably Victorian) and modern glazing have all been added over the years to make this a more comfortable home. The steep pantile roof with gabled ends probably replaced an earlier thatched roof – these still existed in the town into the mid-19th Century!
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