56, High Street

DEBENHAM HIGH STREET (west side) TM 16 SE 6/110 No.56 (formerly listed 9.12.55 as Oakcroft; House adjoining Oakcroft on SE side)

GV II

House. A late C14 single-ended Wealden-type house with early-mid C16 wing to rear. The later upper end of this house is now within No.54 adjacent (qv. Item 6/109). Restored 1974-6. Timber framed and rendered, exposed studding at front. Mid rail has remains of embattled ornament. Pantiled roof. 2 storeys and attic. Jettied service cell with exposed joist-ends; traces of one carved buttress shaft. Flying wallplate has original brackets. Each floor has 2 oak mullioned windows of 1986. To extreme left a re-used C16-C17 battened plank door. A second doorway to right is now blocked. Stack has axial shaft. Interior. Former open hall is of raised-aisle form. Low tie beam with shafted soffit, formerly knee-braced to wallposts. This carries tall cross-quadrate arcade posts with massive braces to the upper tie beam, meeting at the centre. Side ties to wallplates, that to rear with 2 braces, that to front extending to flying wallplate to which the truss is symmetrical. Evidence for an upper crown-post truss: this, together with the arcade plates, is missing, the roof a much later reconstruction re-using many sooted rafters. At the upper end of the hall is a knee-braced tie beam with evidence for studding above but not below. This implies the house was built against an earlier wing. A later rebuild of this wing has a crude scarf joint with the C14 wallplate which has failed. Largely intact studding. Rear wall has cross-entry doorway with 2-centred arch and 6-light hall window with square mullions. Plain joists at service end with evidence for axial division. C16 inserted floor has chamfered joists. Stack inserted in lower bay of hall, in 2 phases; fireplace in service end has lintol formed from re-used timber showing pegholes for medieval doorhead. Rear wing, in 2 1/2 bays, has widely- spaced studs, irregular plain joists and a side purlin roof replacing one of crown-post type.

Listing NGR: TM1744263112