2 And 4, West Street

The property at 2 and 4 West Street in Coggeshall is a house, originally a timber-framed building, dating back to the late 14th century and significantly altered in the 19th century. It is now divided into two separate houses. The main two-bay section faces south, with a 19th-century internal chimney stack on the left side. To the right is a three-bay crosswing (originally longer), with a 19th-century external chimney stack on the right, now partially enclosed by the adjacent property at 10 Market End. The building has two main storeys plus attics.

The ground floor features two early 19th-century sash windows with twelve panes each, set within segmental arches. The first floor has three similar sash windows within moulded architraves. A jetty is visible, faced with plastered brick up to the level of the first floor. The front door of number 2 is a six-panel design, with flush bottom panels and glazed upper panels, also within a segmental arch. Number 4 has a 20th-century replacement entrance, similarly arched. The roof is half-hipped at the left end.

Internally, number 2 retains closely-spaced, plain, horizontally sectioned joists, jointed to binding beams with low-central tenons, a construction technique documented by C.A. Hewett in “English Historic Carpentry” (1980). Number 4 features a plain brace measuring 0.14 metres in width to the axial beam, and a similar underbuilt jetty at the rear. The storey heights are 3 metres and 2.29 metres respectively. In the rear bay of number 2, the joists to the left of the bridging beam are moulded, while the joists to the right are plastered. Original floorboards are present throughout.

A further bay extending toward the rear was reportedly demolished around 1930. At the rear of the upper storey of number 4, there is a blocked doorway with a four-centred head, believed to have originally led to a stair tower. The building includes cambered tiebeams with mortices for crownposts. Within number 2, a length of moulded and crenellated cornice, nailed to the right wall of the front ground-floor room, was noted during an inspection in June 1987. A similar section of carved timber has been removed from number 4 and is currently stored in a shed at the rear. On the first floor of number 4, a partition wall has been faced with 18th-century beaded pine boards; similar boards were also removed from a ground-floor partition. In number 4, on the ground floor, double-ogee moulded joists (said to be from a demolished house in Sudbury, Suffolk) have been incorporated as posts and to frame a 20th-century partition, along with other introduced features.