St Aylotts

St Aylotts is a house built around 1500, apparently constructed by Walden Abbey. It stands on the east side of Ashdon Road in Saffron Walden and is a moated site. The building is a very complete medieval structure with clearly recognisable functional units.

The house is constructed of red brick with timber framing rendered with combed pargetting and a peg-tiled roof. It has a rectangular plan and rises to two storeys. The ground floor is built of brick with diaper decoration in burnt bricks, while the first floor is timber-framed and jettied on all four sides.

The east front elevation features a prominent jetty bressumer with rolled leaf and roll in cavetto mouldings. The corner angle posts are recessed into the brickwork and the dragon beams are decorated with leaf-carved brackets. A central front doorway of clunch, now repaired, sits on the site of the original cross-entry; it has cavetto and roll moulding with a label and is now fitted with a nineteenth-century flush boarded door. To the south is the original window aperture of the hall, moulded and plastered with a brick label and clunch window surround, now containing a three-light casement. A late nineteenth-century spur wall with lean-to roof extends to the south to form a passageway to an outbuilding. A simple boarded house door with a two-light casement is present, along with a brick semi-octagon newel stair tower, partly rebuilt to square. A three-cant solar bay window sits under the jetty, partly of clunch and repaired, with lancet windows in 1:4:1 proportions and a diagonal brick corner buttress. North of the central doorway are two casement windows of three and five lights serving the buttery and kitchen areas, an inserted doorway with timber lintel and simple boarded door. The first floor has a blank south end, with three two-light casements and one three-light casement in the centre and north end.

Windows throughout the building are now casements, mostly twentieth-century, with inserted timber lintels and some earlier units incorporated.

The kitchen stack is located at the north end with the top rebuilt in the nineteenth century; an inserted nineteenth-century smaller stack sits over the junction of the buttery and kitchen.

The rear west elevation contains two large identical stacks with upper stepped stages and pairs of conjoined diagonal shafts, partly rebuilt, at the centre and south ends serving the hall and solar rooms. At the north is a gabled two-storey brick and timber stair and garderobe tower at the buttery and kitchen junction, with a large upper fixed two-by-three casement window and a lower blocked round-headed aperture. The original kitchen doorway has double chamfered brickwork and a four-centred arched head with a nineteenth-century boarded door. A diagonal buttress appears at the southwest corner. The projecting jetty bressumer along this elevation is mainly undecorated except at the north and south ends where the decoration returns round the corners. Between the stacks is a ground floor window that slightly projects, with a moulded brick sill and straight wall joints, originally an elaborate window for the hall, now a four-light casement. North of the hall stack are a four-light casement and a two-light casement in an original chamfered brick aperture. The north end has a three-light window along the remainder of the range.

The south end elevation has diagonal buttresses at the ground floor corners, an off-centre repaired three-light clunch window with two-centred heads, and a moulded bressumer (repaired with simple boarding). The first floor contains a central three-light casement with glazing bars in six-by-three panes.

The north end elevation is dominated by a projecting stepped stack, repaired with the upper section rebuilt.

The interior, although partly re-partitioned, retains a clear medieval layout with large buttery and kitchen units, the cross-entry to the hall positioned roughly centrally to the whole range. Ground floor ceiling joists are moulded, mainly with rolls. Joists in service rooms are chamfered only. The solar stair tower retains original lower clunch and upper oak-block newel steps, an original clunch doorway and boarded door with fleur-de-lys strap hinges. One doorway has been re-sited; its original position between hall and solar shows shell-decorated spandrels. The lateral hall fireplace is of clunch with a flat four-centred arch and cyma and hollow chamfer moulding. The kitchen fireplace mantle beam measures five metres long.

The first floor retains an original passage partition along the east side of the range with three original richly moulded doorways with decorated spandrels providing access from the newel stair to the high-end rooms. At the north end, the passage turns to meet the stair tower with three similar doorways to chambers over the service rooms. The great chamber at the south end has an elegant fireplace with moulded brick jambs and an embattled timber lintel continuing the moulding. Big deep window sills suggest that oriel windows originally existed. First floor wall framing is internally braced with internal recurved stud bracing. Wall plates are edge-halved and bridle-butted. The roof structure spans eight and a half bays with trusses having upper and lower wind-braced butt side-purlins, low queen posts with rear crossed bracing, high collar with upper X bracing, and common rafters over purlins.

This building may have served as an upland retreat for the Walden Abbey community. The evidence of very ample and richly decorated first floor accommodation and spacious service provision, including a very large kitchen fireplace, suggests that a number of people occupied it at one time.