High Thatch

TL 73 SW WETHERSFIELD GOSFIELD ROAD (north side)

1/150 High Thatch

GV II

House. Late C16, altered in C20. Timber framed, plastered, roof thatched. 4 bays facing SE with axial stack. C20 lean-to extension roofed with machine-made red clay tiles to rear of left end. 2 small C20 lean-to extensions with thatched roofs at rear right corner. 2 storeys. Ground floor, 3 casements and one fixed light, first floor 2 casements, all C20. C20 thatched lean-to porch with door on left side. SW gable end (facing Gosfield Road), one C20 casement on each floor, and C20 French windows. Exterior plastered with traditional sawtooth chevron design in panels. Jowled posts, curved tension braces trenched inside heavy studding, face-halved and bladed scarfs in wallplates. Chamfered axial and transverse beams with lamb's tongue stops, exposed plain joists of horizontal section. Large wood-burning hearth facing to right, the mantel beam chamfered with lamb's tongue stops, reduced for C20 grate; smaller wood-burning hearth facing to left also reduced for C20 grate. Diamond mortices for unglazed window in upper storey. Clasped purlin roof, re-using sooted rafters from crownpost roof of an earlier house. Some evidence of the former existence of a timber-framed chimney, in the same position as the present stack, replaced c.1600.

Listing NGR: TL7377130346