Murcocks

Murcocks is a house at Back Lane, Fryerning, of medieval origins that has been substantially altered in the early 19th and 20th centuries. The building is timber-framed, partly clad with red brick in Flemish bond and partly plastered, with a roof of handmade red clay tiles. It now presents as a straight range of five bays facing north-west, but this masks a complex underlying structure comprising a two-bay hall range with a late 16th-century stack positioned in the left, 'low end' bay against the front wall; a two-bay parlour or solar cross-wing to the right; a 17th-century extension beyond that with a 17th-century external stack; one bay to the left of the main stack, occupying the site of the original service bay but heavily altered in the early 19th century with an early 19th-century internal stack; and a 19th or 20th-century external stack to the rear right of the cross-wing. A single-storey lean-to extension of 18th or 19th-century date projects from the rear left, weatherboarded and roofed with handmade and machine-made red clay tiles, followed by a 20th-century lean-to extension of plastered construction with a corrugated iron roof, and a slate-roofed lean-to to the right.

The building is two storeys high. The front elevation is a four-window range of early 19th-century sashes with square panes, asymmetrically arranged, with the ground-floor windows set beneath segmental brick arches. A 20th-century door sits within a 20th-century porch with a flat roof. The roof is hipped and of low pitch. The front and left elevations are of brick, with brick cladding also on the right elevation up to the stack; the remainder is plastered. One similar early 19th-century sash appears on the ground floor of the rear elevation, positioned to the right of the lean-tos.

The interior reveals the building's medieval origins and subsequent modifications. The hall contains a wide wood-burning hearth facing right, with 0.33-metre jambs, a seat recess in the rear jamb, two rectangular salt recesses of L-plan form at the back, and a richly moulded mantel beam of circa 1490, though the hearth has undergone some internal repair. A chamfered axial beam spans the hall, with joists plastered to the soffits. In the left wall of the cross-wing, the ground-floor studs have been removed, but mortices visible in the wall show they were spaced at 0.96-metre centres, indicating early medieval origin. The middle-storey posts and rear left corner post have been replaced by brick piers to first-floor height. The binding beam and joists are plastered, though their levels suggest the joists have been replaced in the front bay while remaining original in the rear bay. The upper part of the left middle-storey post is exposed, showing a jowled form with a severed arched brace, and the wallplate is severed immediately to the rear for a doorway. The hearth at the right end has 0.33-metre jambs and a curved internal surface, with an original cambered relieving beam and a 20th-century mantel beam that replaced a former depressed brick arch. The bricks of the hearth are of 17th-century date, and one brick above the hearth incorporates a fragment of a clay tobacco pipe of 17th-century type. The floor appears to have been rebuilt in the 18th century; only one beam is now exposed, chamfered with run-out stops and accompanied by false joists. The left end bay floor also appears to have been rebuilt; only one beam is exposed, lightly beaded at the arrises, of 18th or early 19th-century type. On the first floor all walls have been raised and the roof rebuilt, though medieval rafters from the hall and cross-wing have been re-used. Some of these rafters are heavily smoke-blackened and are trenched for the collars of a crown-post roof; one retains an original nail-head peg, confirming the early origin indicated by the widely-spaced studding. Substantial portions of this medieval timber structure remain in situ, though mutilated by early 19th-century alterations and now plastered over. The upper part of the main stack was rebuilt in the early 19th century and extended upwards. The present roof is of clasped purlin construction with rafters butted and nailed at slightly less than normal tile pitch; an earlier hip of similar construction remains in situ one bay from the right end.

Historical records document this holding as Morecocks and Murcocks in the Petre archives. A 1556 survey records a house measuring 28 feet long, 19 feet wide, and 9 feet high to the eaves, with a tiled roof and a holding of 8 acres, which appears to correspond with the hall and cross-wing structure. The house is illustrated in the Walker map of 1601 as a low hall range with a central door, a brick chimney to the right of it, and windows at each end, a two-storey cross-wing to the right, and beyond it a small extension terminating in an external stack. This depiction closely matches the present structure, except that the roofs have been raised. Ordnance Survey maps of 1874 and 1894 show the house divided into three cottages.