Court House

OFFLEY HIGH STREET TL 1427 (East side) Great Offley

12/90 No. 33 9.6.52 (Court House (formerly listed as Post Office) GV II*

House. Late C14 open hall house with contemporary 2-storeys jettied crosswing on roadside to W, early C17 chimney and floor inserted in hall and front wall below jetty rebuilt leaving shallow jetty. Restored and rear crosswing added 1972-3. Timber frame roughcast, with upper floor of wings dark weatherboarded. Steep old red tile roofs. A 2-bays medieval hall with base-cruck central truss, spere-posts define cross-passage at E end with service rooms presumably on site of modern rear crosswing. Front range had central entrance on W with evidence for 2 rooms separated by a passage in the middle. Rooms probably a parlour and a shop. Chimney inserted in lower bay of hall backing onto cross-passage. The W front has a roughcast ground floor and dark weatherboarded 1st floor with a shallow jetty on 2 curved brackets. 2 windows to each floor and central entrance. 2-lights flush casements and horizontally boarded door. Gabled dormer to S roofslope of hall range. Interior has exposed frame and roof with hall only half floored now. Collar purlin roofs contemporary in both old parts with short square crown-posts with caps and bases of 3 chamfered mouldings, 4-way bracing, smoke-blackening (slighter in crosswing), and splayed and tabled undercut scarf joints with central square peg in arcade plates and shared wallplate/tie-beam at junction of ranges. Curved wind-braces from backs of heavy, base-cruck truss with collar and arched braces supporting collar carrying crown-post. Spere posts have pronounced jowls. Similar collar-purlin roof to W cross-wing of 2-bays with taller posts with same ornamental square part with cap and base moulded and heavy square-section 4-way bracing. Added purlin and inclined queen-post in each slope. Marks on heavy flat irregular cross-joists of floor for jetty-beam further back within room. Mortices for brackets to front now gone, and for a central passage giving onto a room on each side. Stair in position of present winding stair in NE corner of wing. Chamfered lintel to open fireplace in hall. A fine and complete C14 hall house. (Pevsner (1977)265: RCHM Typescript).

Listing NGR: TL1434427014