Building record SBN 106 - Orcs Barn Cottages, Thorington Street

The building currently known to the Post Office as nos. 1 and 2 Orcs Barn Cottages is an impressive late-15th or early-16th century cross-wing which almost certainly adjoined a demolished hall to the east. The site was known as Oxes Farm until the early-20th century
when the name was apparently corrupted to its present unusual form by misreading the ‘x’ as ‘rc’ (which it closely resembles on the manuscript tithe apportionment of 1837). The crosswingis jettied to its highly conspicuous northern gable, which dominates the length of
Thorington Street, and to the rear of its eastern side-elevation which would have faced a courtyard behind the hall. This jettied rear section, which now contains no. 2 Orcs Barn Cottages, may be a slightly later extension to the two front bays (no.1) but precise analysis is
hampered by the extent to which the timber frame is hidden by secondary render. No.1 appears to have contained only a single large room on each floor when first built, and probably represents the parlour and parlour chamber of the Tudor house. The chamber
preserves one of the finest octagonal solar crown-posts in the region, now partly buried in a 17th century partition. The provision of additional chimneys during the 17th century suggests the wing was converted into a farmhouse in its own right, and the new central hall (now within no.2) retains fine panelling of the early-18th century. Fragments of similar panelling survive on the upper storey of no.1, possibly moved from the ground floor, but with a single exception its internal partitions date only from the conversion of the farmhouse into cottages in circa 1900 and from a further renovation of circa 1970 (S1).