Youth Hostel

This substantial timber-framed building, now a youth hostel, comprises several structural phases dating from the early 16th century with additions around 1600 and the early 18th century, plus 18th- and 19th-century industrial alterations. It was restored in 1951. The building is timber-framed with plastering and exposed studs, peg-tiled roofs, and red brick stacks. It stands two storeys high with an L-shaped plan extending along both Bridge Street and Myddylton Place, and includes a subsidiary brick house in the rear internal angle.

Bridge Street (East) Elevation

The east front comprises four distinct building units running south to north:

Unit 1 (Corner Site, Early 16th Century): This corner unit features a hipped roof and is close-studded and jettied around the street corner. The jetty projects on a dragon-beam decorated with folded leaf ornament, with a moulded capital crested with a fleur-de-lys supported by an angle post and bracket. Despite partial alteration, two medieval shop window openings survive with four-centred arched heads and decorated spandrels. Immediately to the north stands a medieval doorway with a chamfered frame and pilaster buttresses with capitals on the principal bay posts, bracketed to the jetty. Three mortices in the principal window and doorway posts indicate the former location of an attached street stall beneath the windows. The bressumer above was originally embattled but is now cut back. At first-floor level are two three-light casement windows dating from around 1900 with glazing bars, each with three by two panes.

Unit 2: This unit is continuous with Unit 1 but was rebuilt. The ground floor is rendered and retains an original but reconstructed rectangular bay window with roll-moulded members, arranged as one, four, and one lights with a transom and glazing bars totalling six by four panes. The first floor has renewed jetty joists and thin studding, with a three-light casement window similar to those in Unit 1. The roof is hipped.

Unit 3 (Around 1600): Positioned lower due to the downhill slope, this unit is timber-framed, jettied, and plastered with traces of panelled basket pargetting. The ground floor contains one 20th-century two-light casement window with two by three panes, and one shallow four-light three-canted bay window with glazing bars measuring four by three panes, one pane being metal with an old exterior stay. The principal central jetty joist projects with a later applied pilaster capital. At first-floor level are two casement windows with leaded panes—one two-light and one four-light. The building has a stopped gabled roof with a red brick stack.

Unit 4 (Late 16th-Century Barn): Further downhill stands what was originally a late 16th-century timber-framed barn of three bays with a peg-tiled, stopped gable roof. The south bay, contiguous with Unit 3, was enclosed as a house in the early 18th century. It features a doorway with an enriched flat cornice hood and a door of six recessed panels, the upper two now glazed, the middle two having upper inner shaped corners. Adjacent is an 18th-century fixed window with glazing bars measuring four by three panes. The first floor has one two-light leaded casement window, and the plaster shows traces of ashlar lining. The centre of the barn unit contains a high waggon-way extending up to the eaves, with a 20th-century two-leaf half-height boarded door. The adjacent bay to the north has full-height weatherboarding.

Myddylton Place (South) Elevation

The south side comprises a long range of nine bays—four extending from Bridge Street (Unit 1) plus a further five bays (Unit 5)—measuring approximately 28 metres in total. This range continues the same jettied system of close studding with pilaster-buttressed principal bracketed posts. The elevation features three external curved wall braces (two tension and one stud). An embattled bressumer sill remains, though the decoration is partly cut away. The entire roof is peg-tiled.

Four Eastern Bays (Unit 1): Running east to west, the ground floor features an angle post, a fixed window with moulded architrave and glazing bars measuring three by two panes, and an early 18th-century door in a plain door case with six fielded panels. There is an inserted frieze window of three lights with 16th-century roll-moulded mullions and slender plain intermediate mullions. A 19th-century canted bay window (with remnants of medieval pilasters and bracket mortices on each side) contains horned sashes with glazing bars arranged as one by four, four by four, and one by four panes. At first-floor level, the tension-braced corner has one three-light casement window set in the aperture of an earlier oriel window, with three by two panes.

Myddylton Place Range (Unit 5): Running east to west on the ground floor is a 19th-century door, reconstructed with an overlight and a door made of 16th-century arrised studded boards, reframed and roughly cut to length at the bottom. An aerating aperture cut through the framing now has simple glazing but also retains earlier nailed louvre strips. The west end bay contains a large blocked 16th-century window with a deep sill, three lights with roll-moulded mullions and jambs, now cut off flat to the street level with the upper part glazed and treated as the previous aerating aperture. The adjacent bay to the east has a curved stud brace. At first-floor level, the west end has a tension brace. There are two complete 16th-century oriel windows and the site of another. The complete windows have canted sides with four arched lights featuring projecting roll-moulded and shaped corbel sills, roll-moulded mullions, and 20th-century glass. The incomplete window retains moulded jambs with 20th-century glass. At attic level, a prominent early 19th-century hoist loft projects on brackets with a hipped roof and simple front and east side lights.

Rear (West) Elevation

The rear is L-shaped, including the north elevation of wing Unit 5 to Myddylton Place. Most of the rear is rendered with early 20th-century casement windows with glazing bars.

North Range (Units 3 and 4): The ground floor has three casement windows—one four-light measuring eight by four panes, one three-light measuring nine by four panes, and one two-light measuring six by four panes. The first floor contains one two-light window with six by three panes, one three-light with nine by three panes, and one flat-roofed dormer with four lights measuring eight by four panes. The north end bay of the barn (Unit 4) is weatherboarded. The internal waggon/carriageway faces weatherboarding with loft doorways. Rooms below are entered from the carriageway.

West Elevation of Unit 5: The ground floor has several windows—one three-light with three by nine panes, one three-light with two lights having louvred glass and one still with three by three panes, and one two-light window with six by three panes with an integral adjacent doorway having an overlight and plain 20th-century door. The first floor has two windows of three lights measuring nine by two panes, and another similar window but with a central 20th-century fire-door through the central light with escape stairs.

The southeast angle has a pair of early 18th-century brick houses with burnt headers, peg-tiled roof, and end and rear stacks. The first floor has three early 18th-century sash windows (unevenly spaced), slightly inset with thick flat glazing bars. Above is a dormer with a hipped gable containing three casement lights with glazing bars measuring three by three panes. The ground floor has two original doorways paired under a long 18th-century central coved hood (rudimentarily repaired). One door has four panels with the upper two glazed and the lower two recessed; the other has simple upper glazing and rudimentary lower boarding. Windows flank the doors—to the east, a large square window with moulded 18th-century architrave now containing 20th-century glazing of three by four panes; to the west, a 20th-century three-light casement in an 18th-century aperture.

Interior

Bridge Street Range, Unit 2: The ground floor room is the principal room of the building and probably represents a shortened medieval hall. The south end features an early 16th-century central recess with side recesses, all moulded and with rose-decorated spandrels. This recess appears to be a high-end canopy relating to the rebuilt street window but may be a spere frame relating to the extant 16th-century street door. These features are now set high above floor level as the street level has been dropped. The same room contains a large mid-17th-century eared fire surround with an arabesque-decorated panel and fluted keystone. Panelling from around 1600 in this room uses similar panel sections found elsewhere in the building.

Unit 3: The ground floor fireplace backing has been reworked with some later 16th-century brickwork and Delft tiles surrounding a 20th-century inner fireplace. The room has principal late 16th-century joists crossed in the centre with lamb's tongue chamfer stops.

Myddylton Place Range (Unit 5): This range continues the framing from Unit 1 with a corner dragon beam, heavy joisting, and principals with reduced centre tenons and scribed shoulders to step-stopped chamfers. The common joists are flat-laid, diminished, and haunched soffit-tenoned. This jointing represents advanced transitional construction of the earlier 16th century which, together with the exterior stud brace, suggests a date of around 1520–1525 for the work in ranges Unit 5 and Unit 1. The contemporary wall plates are scarfed with a halved and bridle-butted scarf having a slight splay. The roof has clasped side purlins with wind braces. The framing of the hoist loft is of simple primary braced type from around 1800 and still contains a hoist wheel mainly constructed of wood.

Historical Note

The original 16th-century use of the site is debated. It may have been a merchant's house with a long storage range, perhaps including saffron storage, or possibly a guildhall, as shops were a common feature in Essex guildhalls. The use as a malting probably dates to the early 18th century and relates to the unusual inner pair of brick houses constructed then. Simple louvred openings to Myddylton Place were presumably made for ground floor malting floors.