Building record KSY 052 - Ailsa Cottage, The Green

A 15th-16th century timber-framed and plastered building with a thatched roof. The oldest part of the Cottage is the jettied gable to the left of the present entrance. Dating from around 1400, when Kersey was enjoying an economic boom, it contained the cross-passage and twin service rooms of an open hall. This hall, open to its roof in the manner of a barn and heated by a bonfire-like open hearth, lay further to the left, adjoining Green Gables, but has since been completely rebuilt in brick. The entire property was no more than 21 feet in length, and remains a rare example of a small medieval house despite the loss of its hall. The building to the right of the jettied gable was built as a separate house in the early-16th century, replacing an earlier building on the site, and represents a fullyfloored and jettied hall with an internal fireplace in the latest Tudor fashion. Confined to a narrow, irregular plot of land between older houses and the street corner the new building possessed only a hall and cross-passage on the the market but contained a parlour in a narrow wing behind its hall.This parlour boasted a two-storied gaderobe which projected from its rear corner over an adjacent stream, and there is evidence of a similar feature behind the medieval service wing. Its rare to find a pari of adjoining urban tenements in this way, each overcoming the exigencies of limited space in different ways, and most extraordinary to find them in a single modern dwelling. The explanation lies in a development of circa 1600, by which time Kersey's economic heyday was over and the commercial pressures of its market had subsided. The tenements were combined into a single house by the simple expdient of inserting a new pair of service doors into the outer wall of the medieval cross-wing and initing it with the Tudor hall. The medieval hall was probably converted into a shop or bakehouse at the same time. The life of this third, much larger house seems to have been short-lived, as Kersey's wealth dwindled still further, and it had been re-converted into a pair of rented labourer's cottages by the early part of the 19th century. Its evolution from twin tenements to a single house and back to twin tenements once again is strikingly similar to that of 'Ancient Houses' in kersey, and reflects the changing fortunes of the whole village (S1).