Building record WSH 025 - The Grange

The Grange is a building of great historic interest that dates in part from the 14th century and preserves some of the most impressive 17th century pargeting in the country. Its significance lies not just in its remarkable variety of architectural styles, which reflect the changing tastes and domestic expectations of six centuries, but in its exceptional documentary history. Although known as ‘The Grange’ only since the late-19th century (and formerly called The Grove) it was owned during the Middle Ages by the Benedictine nunnery at Wix in north Essex and passed to Eton College at the Reformation. A remarkable manuscript map of 1595 includes a small but apparently accurate picture of the house, and describes it as the college’s property. The earliest part of the building may have been built by one John Costin, a fuller of woollen cloth, who held it from the nunnery during the 14th century and leased the fulling mill known as ‘Sparkefordemelne’ on the nearby brook. (Washbrook Street was termed Sparkford Street until the early-19th century, and until 1884 much of it, including The Grange, lay in a detached segment of Hintlesham parish.) Further research in the accounts and rentals of Wix Priory and Eton College would shed much greater light on the former owners and tenants of the house.

Of the 14th century timber-framed structure built by John Costin or his immediate successor only the jettied parlour cross-wing now survives. This lies at the western end of the building, which originally faced north towards the adjacent road, and its first-floor room may represent the solar which Costin’s son reserved for his own purposes when leasing the house in 1325. The cross-wing originally adjoined an open hall that was open to its roof in the manner of a barn and heated by a bonfire-like open hearth. This hall was rebuilt to accommodate the existing brick chimney and ceiling in the 16th century, and its roof later raised to its present height, but many re-used soot-encrusted medieval rafters still remain. At some point the original entrance passage and storage rooms that lay to the east of the hall, probably in the form of a matching gabled cross-wing, were demolished and the house truncated at its chimney. Around 1560 a large new timber-framed and jettied range was added to the rear of the 14th century parlour, and its principal façade may have been transferred from the north to the east, as today. Unfortunately the framing of this 16th century addition is largely concealed and precise analysis of its form and function is therefore impossible. A refurbishment of the early-17th century saw the insertion of new windows and the concealment of the exposed timber frame behind an insulating layer of external (S1).