Weavers House

Weavers House is a Grade II* listed building located on Lower Street in Stratford St Mary. It is a house that likely originally included weaving premises, dating from the early to mid-16th century. The structure is timber-framed with a plain tile roof and red brick stacks, designed in an L-plan. It has two storeys and a five-and-a-half bay front with a two-bay rear cross range, which may have been truncated.

The house features a lobby entry with a further blocked entrance on the right end, which has a separate staircase and no access to the main house on the first floor. The front is jettied, with a moulded bressummer and visible joist ends. The close-studding and straight down braces are present on the right end. The lobby entry, now open to inner doors, has an added cornice and patterned carved brackets. The windows are primarily of the ovolo mullion type, with most being original but some inserted from other buildings. The main house's windows have side lights, except for the hall, which features a pair of five-light windows in a continuous row. There is a small two-light window above the entrance, and a long row of mullioned lights extends around the gable end to the stack on the right.

The roof is steeply pitched and swept, hipped to the left, with a saw-tooth ridge stack and a large external stack on the right gable. The cross wing and rear display similar architectural details. There are indications on the rear wall of the right end of a former external stair.

Inside, the house has exposed framing, with ovolo-moulded beams and joists at the upper end, and a chamfered beam with curved stops on the right end. The parlour on the left features 17th-century panelling and an inglenook fireplace, while there is a newel spiral stair behind the stack. The hall contains a rendered basket-arched fireplace, and there is evidence suggesting the possible position of a loom against the rear wall. The right end has 20th-century stairs and an inglenook, and the rear wing includes a 17th-century painted door. During restoration work in the 1930s, plaster dated 1758 was removed from the front of the house, uncovering several blocked original windows. Some windows and other features have been sourced from houses undergoing demolition in Ipswich and elsewhere.