7, High Street

No. 7 High Street, Kelvedon

Part of an inn, now a house. The building is timber-framed and plastered, dating to the late 16th century with alterations in the 18th and late 19th centuries. The facade is of yellow brick in Flemish bond, roofed with handmade red plain tiles.

Originally, this structure formed a late 16th-century extension to an early 16th-century mansion (now nos. 1, 3, and 5 High Street), which after the Dissolution became an inn. The original structure comprised one ground-floor room, to its right a large wagon-way (both approximately 3.70 metres high), and two rooms above. The building formerly extended approximately one metre further forward, but this was cut back to align with nos. 1, 3, and 5. A late 16th-century internal stack stands at the left end, positioned against an earlier stack from no. 5, joined to it only at roof level. The wagon-way was blocked in the 18th century and a stack added to the rear. Two 18th-century adjacent wings to the rear have hipped roofs. A 19th-century single-storey lean-to extension with a slate roof extends beyond the right wing.

The building is two storeys. The ground floor features one late 19th-century tripartite sash window of 2-2-2 lights. The first floor has two late 19th-century sashes of 2 lights. A late 19th-century four-panel door and blocked overlight in a stilted segmental arch with false keystone are evident. A dogtooth band decorates the first floor, with a dogtooth cornice and plain parapet with stone coping above. The roof is hipped. The yellow brick facade continues partly around the right return, then continues as four courses of red bricks to one course of yellow bricks in Flemish bond. The dogtooth band and parapet extend 1.5 metres along this return. The rear elevation has a 20th-century picture window at ground floor and an early 19th-century twelve-light sash at first floor.

Internally, the ground floor exposes posts and straight bracing at the right side of the former wagon-way, with 18th-century studding behind. The studded partition between the wagon-way and the left room has been removed. A plain transverse beam and axial bridging beams are present, with chamfered joists of horizontal section with step stops. A 20th-century grate is installed. At the left side, two brick piers support an arched wood-burning hearth above, which has a front jamb 0.61 metre wide and a rear jamb reduced in width, with a chamfered mantel beam with step stops. Within the roof, the flue joins the adjacent stack, which has two diagonal shafts but was rebuilt to rectangular section before emerging from the roof. Original 16th-century pointing of V-section survives within the roof and inside the room above the hearth—a rare feature of exceptional archaeological interest requiring special care. In the rear wall of the room over the wagon-way is a blocked window of early glazed type, with two ovolo mullions and two of three diamond saddle bars in situ. The roof is a clasped purlin type. In the party wall with no. 5, exposed studding remains, with mortices in the girt indicating a former floor since removed for the present staircase. In the rear wings, boxed transverse beams are present; on the first floor, a cast-iron ducknest grate of circa 1800 survives.

The mansion to the left had become a major inn by 1604 and had been converted to tenements by 1791. The blocking of the wagon-way and the alteration of this wing to a house appears to correspond with this date.