Building record NYW 082 - Vine House, 1 Court Street

Vine House is a grade II-listed timber-framed building with a Georgian brick facade that adjoins the Post Office in the centre of Nayland. From at the least the mid-18th century until its closure in circa 1909 the property was the Vine Inn, and was owned in conjunction with a separate 15th century structure known as Vine Cottage to the south. The building dates from the first quarter of the 16th century and reflected the standard domestic layout this period with a jettied hall and service bay on the street and a parlour in a contemporary rear wing behind the hall. Many Tudor houses were ‘L-shaped’ in this manner to compensate for the restrictions of urban locations. The ceilings of both the hall and parlour were finely moulded in the best fashion of their day, and the parlour joists remain fully exposed in the modern kitchen. The building is of exceptional historic interest due to the rare survival of an original two-bay open hall at the back of the parlour wing, originally open to its heavily sooted crownpost roof in the manner of a barn and entered by a separate door from the yard. This hall lacked a ceiling in the normal sense, but contained windows on both its lower and upper storeys and was probably designed as a commercial brew-house – suggesting the Vine may have been an inn from the outset. Alternatively the open hall may have formed a dye-house owned by a cloth merchant. The property was extensively refurbished in the late-18th century, with the brew-house converted into living accommodation and a central stair passage inserted behind the new street facade. A large single-storied brick stable and a series of brick service sheds were added to the rear, but these were reduced in scale as the inn’s business declined and eventually ceased.