Building record BRF 160 - 2-6 Church Green

2-6 Church Green is a highly impressive and historically important timber-framed building of the mid-16th century that probably represents one of the bestpreserved Tudor inns in the county. Extending to over 70 feet in length, when contemporary houses elsewhere rarely exceeded forty, it boasted an expensive and ostentatious array of carved windows that extended almost the entire length of its façade to light the fine moulded ceilings within. The structure contains a number of features that suggest it was not a normal domestic property, and its conspicuous corner location at the entrance to Bramford from Ipswich accords with documentary evidence to indicate that it was designed as a major inn. Such an interpretation is supported by a reference to the building as ‘the Ship’ in a sales deed of 1709. Floored throughout and with a jettied upper storey after the fashion of its day, the building originally contained three ground-floor rooms and was entered by a cross-passage in the position of its present bay window. The central hall was provided with a carved and moulded ceiling, and was divided from the more plainly decorated room at the right-hand end of the house by a large brick chimney that was probably rebuilt in the 17th century and removed entirely during the 1960s. This chimney contained back-to-back fireplaces heating both rooms as in standard domestic houses of the mid-16th century where the right-hand room would have been used as a parlour for sleeping and private entertainment. Instead of the twin storage rooms usually found at the opposite end of the hall, however, 2-6 Church Green contains a second finely decorated room that presumably served as the principal parlour, albeit lacking a fireplace. This feature is often found in early inns, where accommodation was paramount, and the remarkable absence of ground-floor windows in the entire rear wall strongly suggests the presence of a gallery – another characteristic of inns. While the present rear wings are later additions (the southernmost of which forms no. 8 Church Green), it seems certain that the original building possessed a substantial rear courtyard that contained its service rooms, stables and probably additional accommodation (S1).