Building record HAD 205 - 1-3 Duke Street

1-3 Duke Street is the easternmost property on the southern side of the street and adjoins Hadleigh Public Library on the corner of the High Street. Listed as an undated timber-framed structure with a late-18th century red-brick facade the building is in fact one of the most important 17th century houses in the town, with origins in the 15th century. Its Georgian front range was rebuilt on the site of an older building, but its rear wing contains several exceptional 17th century features of high quality including a complete first-floor plaster ceiling decorated in relief with vine trails, fleur-de-lis and Tudor roses. An architectural wall painting showing a tiled interior with Romanesque arcades survives in the same room above a fine contemporary arched fireplace retaining most of its red-ochre pigment, and the groundfloor room beneath preserves an impressive array of in situ carved panelling. Most remarkable of all is an intact lean-to gallery with a continuous window that is now blocked and may retain its original moulded mullions or turned balusters. This gallery is contemporary with the adjoining 17th century rooms and linked the former street range to a 15th century rear wing that was initially roofed at right-angles. Galleries of this kind are rare features that arenormally found only in inns, and the adjoining library is known to occupy the site of a major 17th century inn called The Crown which survived as the White Horse until 1855.

The property is unusually well documented thanks in part to a collection of deeds dating back to 1678 (summarised in the Appendix) and the extensive manorial research of Hadleigh historian Sue Andrews. It was purchased for £70 in 1679 by William Beaumont, gentleman, who already lived in the house as a tenant and had purchased an adjoining property on thewest for £17 10s the previous year. The latter may have been demolished to create a new vehicle access where the garage now stands. William was known as Captain Beaumont and died aged 83 in 1712 having produced 14 children and outlived three wives (according to his grave slab in the church, which lies under a carpet next to the organ). His family had been a major political and social force in the town since the 16th century, when they were successful clothiers, and his brother Joseph was a poet and Professor of Divinity at Cambridge. The property had formerly belonged to a Nicholas Mowton who paid manorial rent for it in 1644, and the present features are more likely to date from this period or slightly before than from Captain Beaumont’s tenure. Any link between Mowton and The Crown is unclear, but themost likely explanation for the gallery, which overlooks the former inn yard, is that it was built as part of the inn but quickly sold off for private occupation as a speculative venture. The building on the opposite side of the house was bought by Beaumont in 1678 from an ‘innholder’ who evidently doubled as a property speculator. From the mid-18th century until the mid-19th the combined property was owned by the estate of a wealthy tanner, the trustees of which must have been responsible for the Georgian brickwork, and in the 1830s and 40s it was occupied by a ‘currier and leatherseller’ (who probably sold his wares from an early-19th century shop window that projected from the kitchen wing on the right until its removal in the 1950s). Despite several unsympathetic alterations in the late-20th century, including a new side-porch that cut through the gallery, the combination of well preserved, high status 17th century features, each of which represents a rare survival, is of special national significance and the property merits listing at grade II* rather than its current grade II.