Building record MKE 049 - Foskers

Foskers is a thatched and rendered timber-framed building that originated in the early-15th century as an ‘open hall’ house. The early fabric has been truncated and much altered, but a pair of particularly fine and unusual service doorways is preserved in the present right-hand gable. The medieval house contained a central hall, open to its roof in the manner of a barn and heated by a bonfire-like open hearth, and was flanked to the left by an unheated parlour and to the right by twin service rooms that have since been demolished. A brick chimney was inserted into the ‘high’ end of the hall during the 17th century and an additional room added to the parlour gable in an apparent conversion of the property into a pair of tenements. The original house rose to only ten feet at its eaves, but its walls were raised by five feet in the 18th or early-19th century to provide additional headroom on the upper storey, and the structure was extensively modernised with a mixture of old and new timber in the 20th century (S1).