17, Navestock Side

This building, known as No. 17 Navestock Side, is a house that was originally divided into two but is now one. It dates from the mid-16th century and late 17th century, with 20th-century additions. The structure is timber-framed, plastered, and weatherboarded, topped with a peg-tiled roof. It has one storey and an attic, featuring a gabled dormer and a central stack. The roof is half-hipped at the west end with a minor stack, while there is a two-storey cross-wing at the east with a front hip and a minor stack on the east wall. The windows are 20th-century wooden casements with rectangular leaded lights, and there is a 20th-century porch with a boarded door.

Inside, the house includes a medieval open hall with a sooted roof and a jettied service cross-wing. Both sections have crown posts with thin board-like braces. The first floor of the cross-wing retains mullion holes and shutter grooves for windows on both the front and back, and the frame features rising internal braces that curve slightly at the corners, along with a central truss. The floor joists are flat laid and centre tenoned, and the jetty has been underbuilt. A similar jettied block once existed at the west end but has been replaced by a narrow 17th-century bay. The open hall maintains its central truss with shallow chamfered arched braces that show heavy saw marks. The hall frame has exterior arched bracing, and all chamfered members have step stops. The high end of the hall retains arched bracing to the tie-beam and middle rail, with peg holes indicating the site of an original bench. In the late 17th century, the hall was divided horizontally using slender deep section joists, and a fireplace was added against the service side of the central truss, with a dormer window to illuminate the upper storey. Elements of the cross passage have been destroyed, but the site of the front door is marked by a discontinuity in the weatherboarding.