Details
TL 8422-8522 COGGESHALL CHURCH STREET
(north-west side)
9/46 No. 49 (formerly
2.5.53 listed as Old Country
House)
GV II
House. Circa 1565, altered in C18 and C19. Timber framed, plastered and
weatherboarded with some exposed framing, roofed with handmade red plain tiles.
Main range of one bay facing SE, with rear stack, and 2-bay crosswing to right,
with axial stack of c.1600. Single-storey lean-to extension to rear of main
range, roofed with red clay pantiles. 2 storeys. Ground floor, 2 late C19/
early C20 sashes of 4 lights. First floor, 2 early C19 sashes of 12 lights, or
replicas. Central C20 6-panel door, the top 2 panels glazed, in early C19
moulded architrave with moulded flat canopy on profiled brackets; one stone
step. Underbuilt full-length jetty with exposed bressumer, carved with
grotesque beasts and scrolls, and weathered. Above the jetty, exposed close
studding, without visible bracing. Beside the 2 first-floor windows mortices
indicate the former presence of oriels; it is likely that there were similar
oriels below the jetty. The rear elevation is weatherboarded, and has on the
first floor one early C19 sash of 3+6 lights. Jowled posts, ledged for the
binding beams. A post in the rear wall of the main range is rebated for a
former external door. C20 grate in main range. In the front wall of the
crosswing, exposed internally, is one of a former pair of flank windows of early
glazed type, with 2 moulded mullions and 2 of 3 diamond saddle bars, inserted
c.1575. Moulded transverse and axial beams with step stops, some with foliate
carving, mostly sand-blasted; plain joists of horizontal section, mostly
plastered to the soffits. The right front hearth has ovolo-moulded jambs and
depressed arch, stripped back to the brick and sand-blasted. The rear hearth
against it is C18/19. The left tiebeam of the main range is chamfered with step
stops; the right tiebeam is chamfered with lamb's tongue stops, with one
chamfered brace. The right section, although described here as a crosswing, has
jowls facing forwards and backwards, one chamfered brace in the same plane, and
a mortice visible for another. One beam above the first floor of this part is a
later insertion, and has a face-halved and bladed scarf and mortices for missing
studs. The roof of the rear bay of the crosswing is original, with high clasped
purlins and straight wind-braces; in the rear gable is original wattle and daub
infill. The remainder of the roof has been rebuilt in the C17 or early C18 in
one continuous range parallel with the street, with pegged apices, clasped
purlins, without wind-bracing. This house occupies the site formerly occupied
by the entrance bay and service bay of an early C14 aisled hall to the left (no.
47, item 9/39, q.v.); deeds in the possession of the owner indicate that it was
part of the same building, The Bull Inn, in the C18. The combination of
mouldings, step stops and lamb's tongue stops, and the style of the carved
bressumer, permit close dating (See J. McCann, The Introduction of the Lamb's
Tongue Stop - some new evidence, Historic Buildings in Essex 2, September 1985,
2-5). It is adjacent to a building of similar date (nos. 51, 53 and 55, item
9/47), and opposite to a building dated 1565 (nos. 52 and 54, item 9/66) and
another marginally earlier (no. 1, Albert Place, item 9/19), indicating a local
wave of prosperity at that period, when elsewhere in Essex and Suffolk the
woollen cloth industry was in decline. RCHM 12.
Listing NGR: TL8517422771
