Building record BIL 043 - Tudor Cottage, 44 High Street

Tudor Cottage is a well-preserved medieval open hall. The original building reflected the standard domestic layout of the medieval period and can be dated on stylistic grounds to the first half of the 15th century.At 30 feet in length by 18 feet in overall width the house was large by the standards of its day, but rose to only 9 feet at its eaves and was unostentatious when compared with the gabled and jettied merchant’s houses in the centre of town. The Bildeston tithe map of 1839 appears to show a barn to the rear of the property and combines with its plain exterior to indicate that it was built as a mid-status farmhouse beyond the medieval town’s southern margin. The house appears to have acquired its existing proportions by the 17th century when the brick chimney was inserted into the middle of the former hall. This created a typical ‘lobby entrance’ layout, fashionable from the 1630s onwards, where the front door opened into a lobby against the chimney with access to the hall (to the right) and parlour (to the left). The medieval parlour remained unheated and was probably demoted to a storage area. Much of the building’s original frame is hidden behind plaster and could be re-exposed, but any original timbers or wattle-and-daub may retain traces of medieval soot or decorative pigments of the 17th and 18th centuries (S1).