15, Grange Hill

TL 8422-8522 COGGESHALL GRANGE HILL (east side)

9/125 No. 15 13.3.75 GV II*

House. Late C14, altered in C19 and C20. Timber framed, plastered, roofed with handmade red plain tiles. 3 bays facing W with C20 internal stack at right end. Wing to rear, 1978, all weatherboarded. 2 storeys. Ground floor, 2 sashes of early C19 type, of 16 lights. First floor, 3 late C19 sashes of 4 lights. Central C20 6-panel door with small hood on profiled brackets. Chamfered binding beams with step stops, plain joists of horizontal section jointed to them with low-central tenons, in all bays. Widely spaced studs with curved tension braces trenched to the outside. A former studded partition between the left bay and the remainder has been removed at both storeys. On the ground floor a wide gap between mortices at the front end, and a square rebate, indicate that originally a door led through here into a parlour in the left bay. The post to the rear is chamfered with step stops on the lower storey, rebated on both sides on the upper storey, apparently for a door through to a solar in the left bay. The posts are unjowled, except those of the open truss between the middle and right bays, which are also chamfered, with 2 plain braces O.12 metre wide to the cambered tiebeam; mortices for missing braces to the binding beam. Tenoned and splayed scarf in front wallplate. Crownpost roof with thick axial braces; straight down-braces trenched into the right sides of the studs in the closed truss; curved down-braces in the open truss. Collar-purlin missing in right bay. Most of the rafters have been renewed. This curious building does not correspond with any other known. Its position on the corner of Grange Hill and Abbey Lane, both ancient, indicate that it can never have extended further to the W or S. 3 unglazed windows in the rear wall, one with 3 original diamond mullions, renewed sill and groove for sliding shutter, indicate that there cannot have been an attached hall or service bay to the E. All the structural features indicate an early date, at which time a fully floored and unjettied small house was unusual. The position, between Grange Farm and Coggeshall Abbey, and the high quality of the timber and carpentry, indicate a monastic origin. The frame is illustrated and described by D.F. Stenning and M.C. Wadhams in Historic Building Studies No. 1, Essex County Council, 1986, 28-30. The renovation of 1977-8 and the rear wing are by James Blackie.

Listing NGR: TL8499222191