13 & 15, Vale Street (beauty shop & travel agent)
Although much altered, these buildings retain timber-frame details, which indicate that they were formerly one original early-sixteenth-century build. The upper part was a cruck open hall of one and a half bays, which has a central arch-braced cruck and a wide cross-passage against the lower box-framed part. This lower part was a two-storey cross-wing of four bays, which projects to front and rear with an end-jetty to front. Both cruck-couples and box-trusses have wind-braces to purlins. In the seventeenth century a floor was inserted into the hall and a diagonally set fireplace built against the cross-passage with a decorative painted plaster inscription RTA 1639. The hall walls have been replaced in stone and in the nineteenth century a stone-built addition was made to the front of the hall and later the jetty-wing front was rebuilt in brick as a shop front. Some external framing is still visible in the passage between the present shops. The passage was wide enough for cart and horses to reach the stable/cart-house to rear by the nineteenth century.
Ref:DS2013_240_001