Building record ETT 040 - The Chequers

The Chequers is a grade II-listed former inn which can be traced by name in the documentary record to circa 1720. It became a farmhouse early in the 20th century and in recent decades was divided into a pair of cottages. The timber structure was built in two phases at the beginning and end of the 16th century respectively. The earlier of the two phases formed a hall and parlour with a plain crown-post roof and evidence of a cross-passage in the usual domestic pattern of the Tudor period, but appears to have adjoined an older and lower service bay to the rear. This service bay was demolished within a generation or two at most and replaced by a new parlour with an axial chimney and a clasped-purlin roof, at which time a new cross-passage may have been inserted at opposite end of the hall. The 16th century roof structures survive largely intact, along with an arched doorway, but much of the framing on the lower storey is either concealed or missing. A number of variations from the domestic norm, such as its orientation at right-angles to the adjacent road and a lack of windows in the street gable, suggest that it may have been an inn rather than a standard farmhouse from the outset (S1).