RCHME Survey of 55 W Stockwell Street. 17th century building 'has a projecting upper storey on the E front'.<1>

The DOE survey of lists No's 53 to 55 West Stockwell Street together. Grade II. The whole range is implied to be C15 origin, although the RCHME gives No 55 a 17th century date. The listing records the range as a house 'with cross wings north and south. The north cross wing was rebuilt in the C17, the south wing altered in C18-C19 and the gable removed. Two storeys, the roofs tiled. The upper storey projects on the east front of the wings on shaped brackets (No 53) and curved brackets (No's 54, 55) Small oriel shop window with glazing bars on the ground floor each wing.<2>

An Historic England Level 2 building assessment was compiled by Leigh Alston in 2016. This work identified 55 West Stockwell Street as the left wing of typical medieval cross-wing house - a narrow (3m wide) early-15th century cross-wing of two bays, divided into a pair of roughly equal rooms by a missing original stair or chimney. This cross-wing was open-framed against the predecessor no. 56 to the left
(which was rebuilt in the 16th century and may have been part of the same property), and appears to have contained the parlour of a recessed open hall on the right. Any precise interpretation is unfortunately hampered by the complete removal in the 17th century of the ground-floor wall studs adjoining the hall in order to create a larger room. The original wingmay well have extended by an additional bay to the rear, but in the 17th century when the hall was rebuilt against the street it was truncated before being extended once again in the 19th century by 2.1 m. The upper storey of this 19th century addition preserves an area of external comb-patterned pargeting on the side wall of no. 56, and there are traces of a 17th century scheme of wall painting on the ground-floor. Any evidence of the medieval street facade remained concealed at the time of inspection, although the intact timbers of its upper storey were visible with external V-bracing in typical the early-15th century manner. The
cross-wing’s front room may well have operated as a shop from the outset, with a domestic parlour to the rear, and the joists of the two bays differ with old whitewash to the former and what appears to be soot encrustation to the latter. Until the mid-20th century the three cottages (nos. 53-55) remained in the same occupation and housed a bakery business consisting of a dwelling in the right-hand wing, a cart shed in the centre and a shop in no. 55 with a good early-19th century shop window that still survives. A two-storied timber-framed bakehouse lay to the rear and was linked to no. 55 by a single-storied brick shed, but these were demolished in the 1950s or 60s.<3>