Foundry House

TL 8422-8522 COGGESHALL BRIDGE STREET (east side)

9/24 Nos. 15 and 17 31.10.66 (Foundry House) (formerly listed in Birdge Street)

GV II

House. C16, extended in C18 and C19. Timber framed, plastered and weatherboarded with facade of painted gault brick, roofed with handmade red plain tiles. 2 bays aligned NE-SW, jettied to NW, c.1560, and axial stack to SW. 2 bays to SW on same alignment but jettied to SE, c.1580. C18 wing to NW of this last, and early C19 wing to NE, with stack between, completing an approximately square plan with entrance elevations to NW and SW. Minor extensions to SE and NE. 2 storeys with attics. NW elevation, 2 full-height splayed bays of sashes of 12 lights, with crown glass. One C19 casement in dormer with segmental roof of felt. Central early C19 6-panel door, bottom panels flush, middle panels fielded, top panels glazed, in doorcase with false projecting keystones and moulded open pediment on scrolled brackets. Moulded wooden parapet, extending round SW elevation. SW elevation, ground floor, 2 early C19 sashes of 16 lights; first floor, 2 early C19 sashes of 12 lights and one C20 replica. Central 6-panel door, 4 panels flush and 2 glazed, in plain doorcase with moulded flat canopy. Roof fully hipped. The NW and SW elevations are plastered, much of the NE elevation faced with painted brick, the remainder weatherboarded. Railings on a dwarf wall of red brick extend from the W corner to Short Bridge (item 9/28, q.v.), with a cast iron coping, simple rods with flat spearpoints, and 2 rails; central gateway with cast iron gateposts with hooped tops and saltire bracing; gate similar to railings, with dipped top rail and 2 opposed semi-circular rails in lower half. The earliest range has a chamfered axial beam with step stops, plain joists of horizontal section, rebates for the shutters of unglazed windows; the jetty has been absorbed into the NE wing (illustrated in C.A. Hewett, Some East Anglian Prototypes for Early Timber Houses in America, Post-Medieval Archaeology 3, 1969, 105 and 118, with wrong grid reference). Wide wood-burning hearth with mantel beam renewed. The extension to SE has a moulded girt and axial beam, chamfered joists of horizontal section with short lamb's tongue stops, and an underbuilt jetty; the jetty plate is missing. Between the 2 is an early C19 half-glazed door with 2 flush panels and 16 lights, with crown and bullseye glass. On the first floor of the NW wing is a late C18 fireplace surround of pine and gesso in Adam style. 6-panel internal doors on first floor. Roofs rebuilt in C18 and C19. The name derives from the foundry of Richard Kirkham, recorded in 1848 (J.S. Gardner (ed.), Coggeshall, Essex, 1951, 32).

Listing NGR: TL8497822469