Court House

This is a late 14th-century house, originally an open hall house with a contemporary two-story jettied crosswing to the west. An early 17th-century chimney and floor were inserted into the hall and the front wall below the jetty was rebuilt, retaining a shallow jetty supported by two curved brackets. The house was restored and a rear crosswing added in 1972-3. The timber frame is roughcast, with the upper floor of the wings dark weatherboarded. The roof is covered in steep old red tiles.

The original house comprised a two-bay medieval hall with a base-cruck central truss. Spere-posts define the passage at the east end, with service rooms likely located where the modern rear crosswing now stands. The front range originally had a central entrance on the west side, and evidence suggests two rooms separated by a passage, likely a parlour and a shop. A chimney was inserted into the lower bay of the hall, backing onto the passage. The west front has a roughcast ground floor and dark weatherboarded first floor with a shallow jetty supported by curved brackets. There are two windows to each floor and a central entrance. The windows are two-light flush casements, and the door is horizontally boarded. A gabled dormer is present on the south roof slope of the hall range.

Internally, the frame and roof are exposed, with the hall only partially floored. The roofs in both the original hall and the crosswing are of collar-purlin construction, featuring short square crown-posts with caps and bases of three chamfered mouldings, four-way bracing, and splayed and tabled undercut scarf joints with central square pegs in the arcade plates and shared wallplate/tie-beam at the junction of the ranges. Curved wind-braces are found from the backs of the base-cruck truss, which incorporates a collar and arched braces supporting the collar carrying the crown-post. The spere posts have pronounced “jowls”. A similar collar-purlin roof is in the west crosswing, with taller posts, decorative caps and bases, and heavy square-section four-way bracing. Added purlins and inclined queen-posts are also present. Marks on the irregular, flat cross-joists of the floor indicate the former location of a jetty-beam further back within the room. The locations of brackets supporting the jetty and a central passage giving onto a room on either side are now lost. A staircase was originally located in the position of the present winding stairs in the northeast corner of the wing. A chamfered lintel is present above the open fireplace in the hall. This is a fine and complete 14th-century hall house.