Weavers Cottage

Weavers Cottage is a house dating back to the 15th century, with alterations made in the 18th and 19th centuries. It is timber framed and has been plastered, with a roof covered in handmade red plain tiles. The building is situated on Stoneham Street in Coggleshall, shown on Ordnance Survey maps as numbers 24 and 26. It was formerly listed as part of a group of four cottages on the corner of Stoneham Street and Queen Street, and originally stood immediately to the west of the Old Stoneham. A wing to the rear of the left bay has been removed and is now number 2, Queen Street (listed separately).

The house has three bays facing southwest. A 16th-century internal stack is located at the rear of the left bay and an 18th-century stack is at the rear of the right bay. A catslide extension projects from the rear right. The front of the building has two early 19th-century sash windows with 16 lights on the ground floor, some containing crown glass. The first floor has three 19th-century casement windows. A 20th-century six-panel door sits within a plain surround, with a single stone step. The return side facing Queen Street has an early 19th-century casement window with handmade glass and a 20th-century casement window on the ground floor, along with a 20th-century casement window on the first floor. Jowled posts are visible. Inside, a chamfered transverse beam sits on a girt at the front, supported on the corner of the rear stack. The joists are plastered to the soffits. There is a groove for sliding shutters in the girt at the front, and a rebate in the girt at the left end for a shutter of a blocked and unglazed window. The rear wallplate is edge-halved and bridled; the front wallplate is splinted and boxed. A wide wood-burning hearth is positioned on the right, with a 0.33-metre jamb, the left jamb widened with 18th-century brickwork to form an internal cupboard or seat recess, with a small square external recess. A jointing indicates the former position of a doorhead in the rear wall of the middle bay. The right bay reveals exposed plain joists of horizontal section, with a blocked stair trap on the left side and an additional axial beam below it, supported on an iron strap at the right end. There is an 18th-century wood-burning hearth. Weathered timbers of the adjacent property at number 22 Stonehaven are visible at the right end, revealing that its earlier end wall’s studding became the end wall of number 24. Smoke-blackened rafters are visible over the left bays, with unblackened pegs at the apices, and carpenters’ marks suggesting they have been reset, along with 18th and 19th-century rafters above. Queen Street, formerly called Back Lane, historically constricted the left end of the site, leading to the unusual plan. The building’s plan was documented as part of the Royal Commission on Historical Monuments record 38.