Building record LMD 231 - The Posting House

15th C cross wing house wuth an unsooted open hall and a fine crown-post roof (S1).

The two modern properties known as the Posting House and Yeomans were built at the turn of the 16th century as a single house appropriate to a Tudor Merchant of considerable substance. The original building was arranged in the manner typical of this period, with an open hall in its centre flanked by a floored and jettied parlour cross-wing to the left and a service cross-wing to the right. Yeomans represents the service cross-wing, together with a small and irregularly shaped structure to its rear that may haveserved as a sworkshop and was jettied towards the courtyard behind the hall. The Posting House contains the open hal and parlour wing, along with a second contemporary building to the rear and a much concealed and altered structure to the left which may have been added to form a larger parlour in the 17th century. The original partiion walls of the Tudor parlour and the adjacent 17th century range have been altered on the ground floor to form a narrow alley at the extreme left and a pair of modern shops.

The building is an important example of a "transitional" open hall which was never heathed by an open hearth. The existing brik chimney stack in the hall dates only from the late-16th or early-17th century, and post-dates the insertion of the ceiling in the middle decades of the 16th century. The original chimney stack appears to have backed onto the cross-passage at the opposite end of the hall, and was probably constructed of timber and plaster rather than brick (S1).