Building record KSY 021 - Wickerstreet Cottage, Kersey

Wickerstreet Cottage adjoins an unusually well-preserved medieval green between the picturesque villages of Kersey and Boxford and makes a significance contribution to an important local landscape. At the time of the tithe survey in 1843 it belonged to neighbouring Curtis Farm, and until a boundary change in the 20th century it lay in Hadleigh Hamlet rather than the parish of Kersey. The timber-framed building contains two phases of construction, of which the earlier dates from the first half of the 15th century and probably formed a three-bay parlour cross-wing adjoining an open hall. The front bay was removed in the 17th century or later to leave only the central bay and a rear bay that appears to have contained an open kitchen of just 3.65 m in width by 2.75 m in length (12 ft by 9 ft). This bay preserves heavily soot-encrusted walls with evidence of an external entrance and a narrow window with a vertically sliding shutter. Attached medieval kitchens of this type are rare survivals, with only one other direct parallel known in the county. The contemporary hall lay partly on the site of the present garden but was rebuilt to the rear during the second quarter of the 17th century, blocking the old kitchen window. The new hall preserves a number of historic features, such as its original chimney of reddled brick, evidence of a lobby entrance, two impressive ceilings of tall-sectioned joists, two windows with ovolo-moulded mullions and saddle bars and a third tripartite window with intact sills but renewed mullions.

2009: Evaluation trench revealed some medieval pottery and possible evidence of a scattered/destroyed hearth. (s2)