Eight Bells Inn

Eight Bells Inn

This is an inn of 15th and late 16th-century date, situated on the east side of Bridge Street in Saffron Walden. It is timber-framed and plastered with a peg and clay tiled roof, arranged in an L-shaped plan comprising a long street range with an earlier 15th-century rear range and later additions, all of two storeys.

The front west elevation features a continuous jetty with a bressumer decorated with folded leaf and bay interval jetty brackets. One moulded pilaster with capital remains visible at the south end. The plaster is decorated with old pargetting, partly repaired in the 20th century, showing combed panels with semicircular indented borders. A restored brick plinth runs along the whole frontage. The ground floor has two doorways: one central and one at the north end. Both are mainly 19th-century work with pilasters, plain friezes and hoods, and four-centred arched doorheads. The central doorway is original with a 16th-century arched head featuring leaf-carved spandrels. The north door is 20th-century boarded with an upper glazed light. The central door is 19th-century with studded battened boards and three lancet lights.

Three bay windows sit under the jetty, now set on brick bases. The window between the doorways has a rectangular plan with one:four:one lights and an original bracket sill carved with grotesque fish or dolphin motifs either side of the central initials 'T.B'. The bay window south of centre is similar, with an original sill embattled with a sinuous flowered branch below. The south end window is of three cants with one:two:one lights and an original sill embattled with folded leaf around a central rod.

The first floor is restored and has four oriel windows spaced along the range, supported on plastered coves with end brackets featuring contemporary leaf decoration. The 16th-century sills are all embattled, as is the embattled string at the base of the coving. All windows are three-light casements with rectangular leaded panes and return side lights; the central lights have 18th-century metal opening casements with stays and pulls. A single large rectangular stack in 18th-century red brick stands towards the north end.

The north end elevation shows the gable end of the jettied street range to the west and the long range behind to the east. The street range features original folded leaf barge-boards of unusual palmetted form. The ground floor is now of brick, which continues into the rear addition where it carries a deep catslide roof. From west to east, there is a 19th-century three-cant bay window central under the gable with sashes of one:two and three:two and one:two panes. A plain boarded door with overlight and three narrow 20th-century casement windows are also present. The first floor, under the gable, has a restored 16th-century oriel similar to those on the front range but with four casement lights and side lights and a tiled hipped roof. The rear range beyond has a brickwork facade set back to allow a two-storey elevation; it is plastered to the west and weatherboarded over timber frame to the east. The ground floor has two 19th-century single-light casements with a 20th-century boarded door between them, plus three large double-leaved doorways with weatherboard above. The first floor has three simple two-light windows in the plastered wall, which oversteps the weatherboard below. Two roof breaks indicate progressive additions.

The south end elevation retains barge-boards of the original gable end, renewed but decorated in the same style as at the north end. A rear two-storey lean-to addition has a slated roof continued down to a ground floor lean-to.

The rear east elevation shows the street range largely concealed by 19th and 20th-century additions. The long rear wing to the north exhibits three construction phases: to the west, relatively widely spaced tension-braced studs, once jettied but now underbuilt; a central block of two bays with jettying and close studding; and an east end plain timber-framed and plastered unit. Units 2 and 3 each have first-floor boarded air vents.

Internally, the street range employs a three-unit system. The ground floor has moulded principal ceiling joists with roll and cavetto moulding in the south two units, comprising two principal rooms with crossed binding and bridging joists using diminished haunched soffit tenons. Remains of the partition between them survive, still containing a simple original doorway with four-centred arched head. The north end unit shares a stack with the central room and has a similar crossed joist system of the same scantling but unmoulded. The stack has been much rebuilt, though some late 16th-century brickwork survives.

The first floor of the street range shows jowled posts and tie-beams, with internal tension bracing visible in the south end frame. A partition on the first floor above the one below is tension-braced with an original plain doorway. The north end has a half-bay partition similarly braced. An edge-halved and bridled scarf is present in the rear wall plate.

The north end rear wing's four western bays once projected southward and were jettied; the floor has now been removed and the wall underbuilt. These bays feature two-way braced crown posts with foot bracing. The north wall, originally the first floor, contains a blocked three-light diamond-mullioned window with a shutter groove at the east end, with joint evidence for another similar window at the west end.

The central two-bay unit, probably of late 16th-century date, has a trapped side purlin roof. The original east end is clear and now open, though the tie-beam shows partition mortices, a wattle groove, window mullion mortices and a shutter groove. The east end unit is clearly butted to the rest, with its floor removed and internal stud bracing. Its east end wall is now of brick.

19th and 20th-century additions extend behind the street range in several phases into the garden. The building clearly demonstrates that the oldest part is a 15th-century long range running back from the street, with the addition in the late 16th century of the front range. The central unit of the rear range is probably contemporary with the front, whilst the east end unit was added soon after.