Building record HAD 204 - Partridges, 60 High St & 1-5 George Street

The locally famous household store of M W Partridge & Co Ltd occupies no fewer than three grade II-listed buildings on the corner of George Street and the High Street in the centre of Hadleigh: 60 High St, 1 George St and 3-5 George St. The eastern part of the store was addedduring a major refurbishment in the 1980s which included the combination of five previously separate shops and dwellings to form the present open-plan showroom. The listed section was in fact built at the beginning of the 16th century as a single timber-framed property of exceptional scale and status which represents one of the largest and most important buildings in the town. Its continuously jettied facade extends to no less than 60 metres in length on a highly conspicuous site close to St Mary’s church, although much is now heavily disguised by an early-19th century facade with a false third storey in front of the intact medieval roof. The building’s internal partitions were largely removed during the 1980s but its original layout can be reconstructed on the basis of the remaining ceiling timbers. It contained a hall entered by a cross-passage from George Street with a high-end chimney and a parlour to the east. A rear parlour was added slightly later but preserves a fine cross-quadratic crown-post in its roof which contrasts with the plain crown-posts elsewhere. A wide gateway that allowed pack animals to reach a rear courtyard divided the hall from a probable shop on the corner of the High Street, with a large three-bay room continuing along the High Street as part of a rear wing. This unusual layout closely reflects that of Dragon Hall in Norwich, which is known to have been built as the house, warehouse and trading hall of a wealthy merchant. An important undercroft reached by a stair from the gateway extends beneath the entire High Street range of 16.75 m and preserves flint-rubble walls and a remarkable series of arched recesses that appear to survive from the 14th or early-15th century. Its ceiling was rebuilt with the house above and contains timbers of exceptional scale. Beyond the main parlour on George Street lies a pair of semi-detached mirror-image artisans’ houses that are structurally identical to the rest of the building and undoubtedly formed part of the same property. Each house consisted of a hall heated by a chimney against its back wall and a sub-divided parlour bay containing a shop on the street and a stair in its rear corner. Intact pairs of ‘renters’ such as this are rare survivals and illustrate the often close proximity between urban dwellings of the highest and lowest status in the Middle Ages. A second rear parlour wing was added behind the High Street range in the 17th century, probably when the former warehouse or shop was converted into a separate house, and this preserves fine decorative features such as carved panelling and a plaster ceiling with fleur-de-lis motifs. A ceiling with vine and grape motifs of which substantial fragments survive was inserted into the adjoining first-floor chamber at the same time. Much of the wall fabric is currently hidden by plaster and dry-lining which may well conceal the wall paintings and other decorative features with which 17th century buildings of this quality were typically provided. A number of small extensions were added to the rear in the 19th century, preserving earlier external pargeting and red ochre pigment, and a fragment of a 15th or 16th century building still survives to the north of the courtyard.