Building record 1121300000 - 40-44 QUEEN CATHERINE ROAD, STEEPLE CLAYDON

Grade II. Row of 3 cottages, formerly a pair. C16, altered. Timber frame exposed in left gable and rear wall, remainder encased in brick. No. 40 has chequered brickwork dated T. 1. 1753 in blue headers on right gable. Nos. 42-44 have late C19 rat-trap bond brickwork. Thatched roof, half-hipped; brick stacks to gables and centre. 1 1/2 storeys, first floor windows in thatch. No. 40, to right, has 2 bays of 3-light leaded casements with timber lintels, off- centre C20 door and outshot to rear. Nos. 42-44, together, have 2 bays of similar 3-light windows with cambered heads to ground floor, paired leaded casement to upper right and C19 door in metal porch to right. C20 flat-roofed extension to left with cruck truss exposed in remainder of original gable above. Another cruck truss between left-hand bays. Sill beam in rear wall, probably re-used, has carved date 1639. RCHM II p.273 Mon 4 (B1).
Felling date of 1445 obtained for cruck from dendrochronological dating (B2).
Building survey and dendro-dating carried out in March 1989 and 1990 suggest the building was constructed as a three-bay hall house from timbers with a felling date of 1444-5. Bays 1-3 contain the cruck structure, although bay 3 was mostly rebuilt in the seventeenth century. All three bays show evidence of smoke-blackening, but this is most intense in the centre bay. Little evidence of function survives, but it is most likely that bay 1 was the chamber end, with the hall in bays 2-4. The end truss, T1, has a half hip (type ‘V’ apex), and the next truss, T2, has an ‘F2’ apex in which the collar carries a pair of short principals.
During the early to mid seventeenth century bay 3 was rebuilt, truss T3 removed and replaced by a chimney, and upper floors were inserted in bays 1 and 2. Seventeenth century timber-framed walling survives to the rear of bay 3 and in the former gable end at truss 4, the latter with a weathered face to bay 4. The roof was reconstructed with reused timbers, probably from the cruck house. The upper floor in this bay is probably a later insertion. Later in the seventeenth century, bay 4 was added (possibly in 1639, the date inscribed on the sill beam of this bay); the two doors from bay 3, presumably led into a pair of service rooms. In the eighteenth century, the front walls of bays 3 and 4 and the east gable wall were replaced in brick (at a slight angle to the earlier work), with a rear outshut that extended behind bay 3. This probably took place in 1753, the date picked out in the gable brickwork. Other alterations include the addition of a second fireplace and flue to the back of the existing chimney. During the mid-nineteenth century, the front wall of bay 2 was rebuilt in brick. The presence of three front doors indicates the former division of the building into at least three cottages. In the twentieth century a single-storey flat-roofed extension has been built onto the gable end of bay 1, and a lobby extension onto the rear of bay 2. The building is now a single house. See report for detail (B3).