Prayers Thorn

Prayers Thorn is a house dating from the 16th century, with alterations made in the 17th and 20th centuries. It is timber framed, plastered, and has a weatherboarded dado, with a thatched roof. The house features a two-bay hall facing southwest, with a storeyed service bay to the left and an originally unstoreyed parlour bay to the right. A stack in the left bay of the hall, dating to around 1600, creates a lobby entrance. The parlour bay was extended to the right by approximately 1.5 meters in the 17th century. There is a 20th-century extension with a thatched roof at the left end and a single-storey lean-to extension with a corrugated asbestos roof at the rear.

The building is one storey with attics, featuring four 20th-century horizontally sliding sash windows and two 20th-century casements in gabled dormers. A 20th-century door is located in the lean-to porch, which has a shingled roof. Inside the porch, a beam from the inserted floor projects through the front wall and is tusk-tenoned. The structure has jowled posts, heavy studding with curved braces set into the inside, and a clasped purlin roof with arched wind-bracing. The original partition between the hall and the parlour bay has been removed, and a 20th-century imitation unglazed window has been inserted in the rear wall where a wall post was severed. All joists are plain and of horizontal section. The flooring to the right of the stack was inserted around 1600, with one beam featuring a stop-chamfered design with lamb's tongue stops, and another with lamb's tongue-plus-bar stops. The large wood-burning hearth, facing to the right, has been divided by later brickwork to create two opposite hearths. The name "Prayers Thorn" comes from an estate clap of 1603, where the property is referred to as Prayers, followed by the tenant's name, Thomas Cleveland, which was misread as Thorn. This building is situated on the boundary between the parishes of Shalford and Wethersfield but is considered to be in Shalford parish according to the Electoral Register.