Building record COK 170 - Church Cottage

Church Cottage overlooks the churchyard in Cockfield and makes a major contribution to one of the most picturesque scenes in Suffolk. Its brick-nogged and jettied 16th century timber-framed facade has never been rendered and preserves a host of impressive decorative features including a carved bressumer and original roll-moulded window mullions with arched heads. The interior reflects the standard three-cell domestic layout of the period, with a central hall containing a fine moulded ceiling flanked by a cross-passage and a pair of service rooms on the west and a parlour adjoining Church Lane to the east. The parlour lies in a much remodelled 14th or early-15th century structure that retains a ‘durn’ door with a two-centred arch and was probably part of an open-hall house facing the lane. Given its external appearance and close proximity to the church, the property has been interpreted as a Tudor guildhall and is listed as a church house ‘used for parish festivals and holidays’. A will of 1527 bequeathed a plot of land next to the church gate for the churchwardens to construct a guild house for the three religious guilds known to have existed in the parish, but it is not certain this was ever built. The will makes no mention of the medieval house that now forms the parlour, and there is no evidence of the spacious meeting halls found in guildhalls elsewhere. The scale of the ground-floor hall was modest even for a contemporary merchant’s house, extending to only 15 ft in width by 14 ft in length excluding its cross-passage. While the jettied range might be as early as circa 1530 its integral first-floor ceiling, wide high-end chimney bay and butt-purlin roof with wind-braces and a dormer window are more typical of the mid-16th century. It almost certainly post-dates the abolition of the guilds under King Edward VI in 1547, and was designed as a normal domestic house by the Edward or Jowers families who respectively owned the adjoining 12 acres of land and a mill in the second and third quarters of the century. Ironically, the much disguised Church Farmhouse on the opposite eastern side of the church gate is a more likely candidate for the guildhall of 1527 (S1).