Burford's Buildings, Lower High Street
West Side: The Bridge to Priory Lane
Two important buildings dominate this side of lower High Street. Cobb House near the bridge, with its prominent Dutch gables, incorporates part of the former vicarage, while Falkland Hall on the corner of Priory Lane became associated with the neighbouring Bear Inn. Most other buildings are 17th-century houses or cottages, many of them occupied in the 19th century by tradesmen or labourers. A few, such as the former smithy at No. 24, show signs of their earlier use. Lying back from the road near the river are the surviving buildings of the former town mill. Island House (the early 19th-century mill building) has been converted to offices, and nearby is a small pump-house which supplied Burford with water. Other buildings there were millworkers’ houses and cart sheds.
Collection Items
An earlier house here is documented from 1435.
The three rubblestone cottages numbered 20, 22 and 24 are probably all of 17th-century origin, and may have once formed a single property: the fron
This smart 17th-century façade of neatly squared limestone blocks, with characteristic drip-moulds over the first-floor windows, probably unites tw
This intriguing building has an alleged but unproven connection with the clothier Edmund Silvester (died 1569) - see Falkland Hall and Edmund Silve
The Bear Inn was established here probably in the late 1640s by Thomas Matthews (died 1680).