Details
PURLEIGH HACKMAN'S LANE
TL 80 SW
(west side)
1/91 Forge Cottage
II
House. Late C16, extended in C18, C19 and C20. Timber framed, mainly clad with
C18 red brick in Flemish bond, partly plastered and weatherboarded, roofed with
handmade red clay tiles. 3 bays facing E, with external stack at right end, now
enclosed by C18 one-bay extension beyond. C19 single-storey service extension
beyond, with end stack. C20 lean-to extension to rear of right end. One storey
with attics. Ground floor, 3 C18/early C19 casements with crown glass, and 3
C20 casements. First floor, 3 C20 casements in lean-to dormers. Plain boarded
door in rear elevation. Half-hipped gambrel roof. The original building
consisted of an open 'hall' of 2 bays, with bay posts but without a central
tiebeam, with end chimney, and a parlour bay to the left, also unstoreyed, with
a pitched roof. Diamond mortices of an unglazed hall window reported in the
rear wall of the 'high end' bay, not now visible. Weathering of original roof
on stack, approx. 0.60 metre below the ridge of the present gambrel roof.
Jowled posts, wallplates with face-halved and bladed scarfs and rafter seatings
of original roof. This frame is chamfered with step stops. The hall now has a
central binding beam, tenoned and double-pegged at both end, inserted in the
early C17, chamfered with lamb's tongue stops. At each end of it the bay posts
have been cut back to form moulded steps below the beam, and chamfered with
lamb's tongue stops. Plain joists of vertical section are jointed to the
binding beam with soffit tenons with diminished haunches, supported at the right
end of the hall on a jointed and pegged frame against the stack, a rare
construction. The cambered tiebeam between the hall and parlour bay has been
removed, and re-used at a lower level to support the inserted floors. The floor
of the parlour bay, inserted in the early C17, consists of plain joists of
vertical section, with a good series of chisel-cut assembly marks, with a framed
stair-trap (now blocked) and rebated oak boards. An C18/C19 hearth in the left
front corner has the chimney truncated at first-floor level. The main stack is
in 2 parts, of different dates, originally of small bricks and serving the hall
only (the hearth much altered in the C20), with a second hearth facing to the
right, and chimney of larger bricks. The roof has been wholly rebuilt above
wallplate level as a gambrel, with ridge, in the C18. The land is recorded as
Sayers in a tax roll of 1568, owner Webb, taxed at 3d, and in a survey of
Walton's manor of 1584, then a copyhold farm of 15 acres, owner Edward Webb. The
physical evidence indicates construction probably between these dates. The son
of Edward Webb, of the same name, is recorded in a rental of 1611. In 1822
Sayers (then of only one acre) was sold to the Congregational Church of Maldon.
The Trustees' Book records that the dwelling house was altered to 2 tenements in
1826, and to 3 tenements in 1846. The property was sold in 1923 to Frank Brand,
blacksmith, who combined the tenements into one house again, from whom the
present name derives (Essex Record Office, D/DVo 14, D/DHn M7-9, D/CT 277).
Listing NGR: TL8137902744
