Beck House

Beck House is a late 16th-century shop and house located on the west side of High Street in Needham Market. The building underwent significant alterations in the late 18th century. It is timber-framed and plastered, with a slate roof to the front and mainly plaintiled roofs at the rear, incorporating red brick chimneys. The house has two storeys and attics, and originally had three windows. The windows are now mainly late 18th-century small-pane sashes. A large, central two-storey, flat-roofed splayed bay features small-pane sashes, with the ground-floor sashes being accurate late 20th-century replacements of earlier windows. The entrance doorway is a good example of late 18th-century design, featuring a 6-panelled door with sunk and beaded panels, an architrave, a cornice, and an oblong fanlight with radiating bars. Good, unmoulded 16th-century timber framing is visible on the first storey, along with arch-braced trusses and an altered clasped-purlin roof. A rear wing to the right has exposed timber framing dating from around 1600 and some external cable pargetting from the 18th or 19th century.