Full Report for Listed Buildings
The list description is not intended to be a complete inventory of what is listed: it is principally intended to aid identification. By law, the definition of a listed building includes the entire building (i) and any structure or object that is fixed to the said building and ancillary to it and (ii) any other structure or object that forms part of the land and has done so since before 1 July 1948, and was within the curtilage of the building, and ancillary to it, on the date on which said building was first included in the list, or on 1 January 1969, whichever was later.
Date of Designation
11/03/1981
Date of Amendment
29/02/1996
Name of Property
18 High Street
Location
Alongside the Talbot Public House, to the W of Chelsea Lane.
Broad Class
Institutional
Exterior
History: Little is known about the building history of this site: occupied by at least the early C17, there was at one time a poors' tenement known as Chelsea Barracks here: the unconventional form of this building, and the character of its detailing, suggest that the present building may have been intended for institutional use, though it is now a pair of private houses.
Exterior: Rough local limestone rubble with slate roof carried on modillion eaves cornice; brick gable end axial stacks. 3 storeys, 4-window range, with passage entrance to right of centre. No 17 is entered from the passage; doorway to No 18 is at the far right, an insertion which displaces the otherwise regular alignment of openings. A passage entry corresponding to that in No 17 is disused. Incised 8-panel doors with overlight, in architrave with raised diamond motif in entablature, and mutules to cornice hood. Round-arched passage entry. Wide 3-light mullioned and transomed windows with small panes and cambered stone voussoir heads to ground and first floor, and similar lower mullioned windows in attic storey.
Interior: No 17 has steep early C19 staircase running up the centre of the house: 2 rooms on each floor to the front (modified to create one large room to first floor), and a large and a small room on each floor to the rear. Access throughout is directly off the staircase, an unusual arrangement in which the small rear room and the upper front room are approached via a small landing, and the rear large room via a secondary flight of stairs. The second front room is only reached via the first front room. Roof truss of unusual type, in which a king-post has chamfered joints with 2 pairs of braces, themselves cross-braced to the king-post and the tie-beam.
A striking urban building of considerable character.
References: Robert Owen,'Welshpool Landmarks', Montgomeryshire Collections, Vol.38, 1918, p.155;
Ion Trant, The Changing Face of Welshpool, 1986, p.30.
Cadw : Full Report for Listed Buildings [ Records 1 of 1 ]