Building record LRM 039 - April Cottage, Blyth Hill

April Cottage is a complete and exceptionally early timber-framed house of national significance. It originally reflected the standard layout of the Middle Ages, with a central open hall flanked by floored service and parlour bays to the left and right respectively. Dating from the late-13th or early-14th century it contains a number of rare archaic carpentry features including lap joints, widely-spaced square-sectioned studs, straight wall braces and long, splayed scarf joints. The fabric is similar in character to that of the service wing at Alston Court in Nayland, recently tree-ring dated to between 1301 and 1306. Very few timber-framed buildings survive from this period, and most are high-status halls of manorial quality that have been substantially altered or partly rebuilt. April Cottage is particularly unusual as a house of modest scale that survives largely intact and with its original proportions. It also represents one of the oldest halls in the region to have been built without side-aisles in the dominant fashion of the early Middle Ages, and retains evidence of unusually small diamond mullions in its hall windows. At just 2 inches square instead of the usual 3 inches these mullions may indicate a previously unrecognised early medieval norm. Part of the original entrance door with a steeply pointed two-centred arch also survives in the front wall. The roof was rebuilt in the early-17th century retaining some original soot-encrusted timbers from the previous structure of simple collared rafters, and evidence of similar sooting is preserved even on the door arch which escaped the usual destructive cleaning of the 20th century. The present ceilings and chimney are insertions of much the same date as the roof, by which time the internal floors had risen by some 2 feet from their initial levels. The landscape context of the property is also of special historic interest as it lies on the edge of a well documented medieval deer park within sight of Letheringham Lodge. The building appears to have been associated with a five-acre assart into the ancient woodland that was subsequently converted into the park (S1).