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Andrew Mowbray

The Mysteries of Tymperleys - Part 1

Updated: Mar 7

Following on from my last blog, I decided to show how all this can work in practice when I am trying to do research for my tours. A good example of a popular tour stop in Colchester that has its story told in various ways by different guides is Tymperleys, a large medieval house which is currently a tearoom and restaurant in Trinity Street. You have to go through an arch between to shops to reach it as it lies behind the street line.


Aerial photograph of Tymperleys
Google Maps Image of Tymperleys ©Google

So how do I find out what I can say about it?


The Street entrance of Tymperleys showing Nos. 9, 7 and 7A Trinity Street, Colchester.
The Street entrance of Tymperleys showing Nos. 9, 7 and 7A Trinity Street, Colchester.

First let’s look at the building itself to see what it can tell us. It actually consists of a set of addresses which all form one building complex. No. 7A houses Café Med and is on the north side of the passage. Above the passage is Nos 7 which continues to the south side of it and houses a bookshop. South of that is the Youth Enquiry Service who are No. 9. Behind No. 7A but connected to it is No. 8 which is the part usually now referred to as Tymperleys and houses a restaurant and tearoom.


It is possible to get a rough date for buildings or parts of them by looking at their construction both in terms of the materials the building is made from and the way in which these materials were used to construct it. There are plenty of resources online or books you can get to find out about this so I’m not going to go into detail here. However, if you don’t want to do the research yourself, contact me to so I can take you on my “How to read a house” tour at a time and date to suit you.


You can only get very approximate dates as changes in materials and construction techniques tended to start in London but could take decades to spread out to everywhere else and adoption could be patchy for a variety of reasons. It is quite possible also for different buildings built around the same time that some of them will continue to use the established techniques whilst others adopt the new ones.


For example, the Great Fire of London in 1666 spread so easily because most of the buildings in the city had wooden frames filled in with wattle and daub. When London was rebuilt, Charles II ordered that flammable materials could not be used so people were forced to use brick. Outside London, timber frames persisted almost to the 19th century in some places because brick was expensive and you were also taxed on the amount you used.

In later times sometimes builders went retro and use materials and construction methods that are no longer in vogue or had come back into fashion again.


Also, when repairing, restoring, or rebuilding parts or even the whole of a building, old bricks and timbers can be reused, either from onsite or from elsewhere. Old construction technique may also be used to blend in with the existing parts of the building. When old buildings are demolished even today, timbers and old bricks are kept for this purpose.


A building that looks old may have been sympathetically renovated only a few years ago and old buildings can be hidden by later additions and alterations to their structures. When buildings are restored now it is usually a requirement that the parts that have been completely replaced should be obvious, but this hasn’t always been the case.


Looking at the front of the building I can see that the front garden brick wall dates from the late 19th century onwards. The front of the building itself has windows that could date from various periods. The one the first floor of No 7A and the one at the front of the ground floor extension of No. 7 are a style found before the 1709 Building Act. The one on the first floor of No.7 is a of a style required by that building act but superseded by a later act of 1744.


The door of No. 7A was popular in the Georgian period. The door in the passage to No.7 is very simple so hard to date. There is another doorway in the side of the extension behind the noticeboard. It is now bricked up with brickwork that is newer than the rest of the wall as it dates from the late 19th century onwards. The door frame has a simple brick arch which is hard to date.


Windows and doors are not always reliable ways of dating buildings as they can often be changed as fashions in them alter. For example, many buildings that did not have double glazing or PVC doors when they were built now do. Also, regulations were relaxed in the 19th century so what appear to be earlier windows could have been put in then and may even be reused ones from elsewhere.


The front No. 7A is covered with a plaster or render so it’s hard to tell what the wall behind it is, but looking at where the render ends over the arch where it joins with No 7, my guess is that the brick wall over the passage continues behind the render. That brickwork is in style that was popular from the early 18th century through to the late 19th century.


However, if you look carefully at the top of the way it is flat and the roof comes down behind it. This suggests to me that this brick wall is a façade hiding an earlier wall, possibly made with a timber frame filled in with wattle and daub between the timbers. When bricks first became popular, they were expensive and their use was taxed as I mentioned above so using them was a statement of wealth and being in fashion.


Many people couldn’t afford to completely rebuild using them so to keep up with the neighbours and appear more fashionable and wealthier than they actually were, they would put a brick façade on the front of their wooden building to give the impression from the street that their whole building was made of them. You can see several examples of this in Trinity Street and if you want to check if a building has this look for the tell tale sign of a flat top to the front of the wall. There may also be awkwardly matched windows and doors in the façade and if you can see the sides, get around the back, or inside the building, it is often obvious. There is a chimney dating from the 19th century onwards at the north end of No. 7A.


No 9 is timber framed and is obviously part of the same building when you look at the roof and this this adds to my suspicion that Nos. 7 and 7A also share this timber frame but is hidden by a brick façade.


There is a brick arched passageway between No. 7 and No 7A. There is a plaque above the arch which itself looks old and declares that this is the “position of Tymperleys” which seems to imply this is not the original building here.


Plaque on wall saying "Position of Tymperleys, The Birthplace and Residence of William Gilberd, Author of De Magnete and Founder of Electrical Science. B 1544 D. 1603
Plaque over entrance arch

The walls of the passage are interesting. The wall on the northside is of the same period as the front of No 7 which dates from the early 18th to late 19th century. However, the south wall is a mixture of two styles. Up to a couple of courses below the level of the roof of the front single storey extension it is in a style that was popular in the 17th century but did get reintroduced in the late 19th century. There are also some irregularities in the brick pattern from the standard for this style. The bricks above that are in a style that was popular from the early 18th to the late 19th century.


The bricks here look newer, more regular in shape and better made than the bricks in the lower wall. It is not a straight change from one style to the other but is a bit ragged with the older style going a bit higher towards the end the wall. Maybe the older wall was already here and the newer bit was built on top or the was partly demolished and rebuilt for some reason. I think these walls on both sides are also covering a timber frame.

The ground floor extension at the front of the No. 7 also has brickwork which dates to the same period as the façade. However, when you look in the passage where it joins the brickwork of the main building, it abuts it and is not lined up so I think the extension is later than the façade. Through the passage is a tea garden. On the south side No 7 has its rear wall.


Timber framed building on left, brick building in centre with ground floor passage way, timber framed building on right with brick rear extension and chimney.
The Rear of Tymperleys showing Nos. 8, 7 and 9.

Just behind this is garden which lies between No. 8 and No 9. It has a gateway with brick pillars and the pillar on the southside has a brick wall attached to it. It is a few feet behind the back wall of No. 7 and runs parallel to it. The brickwork in this wall is of the same style and type as those in the bottom half of the south arch wall which was used in the 17th century. It was reused in garden walls in later periods, but I don’t think that is the case here due to the bricks used.


Brick gatepost to left with wrought iron gate, wall with English bond brickwork partially obscured by trellis in centre and foliage to right.
Brick wall at rear of No. 7.

No.9 juts out as a wing from No 7. It is timbered framed. However, it has a brick extension with a chimney at the top at its rear. The bricks in this are very crude and irregular in shape and are of a pattern used before the 17th century. This wall looks old and is probably the oldest brick wall in the building. In the 16th century when bricks were fashionable but expensive, those that couldn’t afford a complete rebuild would sometimes have a brick fireplaces and chimneys added and I think in this case these have been incorporated into a brick extension.


Rear of Nos. 7 and 9 showing timber framed building and brick extension with chimney,
Rear Extension of Number 9, also showing garden wall between Nos. 9 and 10.

There is a garden wall dividing No.7 from No. 9. It is also mainly of brick which also predates the 17th century although it has some septaria and Roman brick incorporated into it. Septaria is a mudstone brought from the Essex coast by the Romans to construct their high-status buildings in the Roman town of Colchester. They also made very flat red bricks which look like tiles. The Saxons and Normans took these from the ruins of the Roman town as well as the Roman town walls to use in their buildings as there is no stone that can be quarried in this area and the Saxons and Normans didn’t know how to make bricks.


This supply of Roman material had been largely exhausted, apart from the town walls by the middle of the 14th century so this wall is old. By co-incidence brick making was reintroduced into Britain at about the same time but took a while a long time to catch on and become widespread due to cost of manufacturing and building with them. So, this wall is old and may even predate the rest of the buildings on the site.


Brick wall with pieces of masonry at its base.
Garden Wall between Nos. 9 and 10.

No. 8 which now houses the Tymperleys Tea Room is joined to No.7A at its eastern by a slightly narrower two storey building. It extends westward alongside the northern side of the garden. It is a two-storey timber framed building with dormer windows in the roof. It has tall elaborate brick chimneys. On the ground floor the plastered panels in between the timbers have been replaced with bricks laid in a diagonal pattern. As well as chimneys using brick in this way was another way of showing wealth. It looks like it could date anywhere between the 13th and 17th centuries with the bricks probably being added from the 16th century onwards. It has a modern single storey extension at it western end.


I took a look inside No.7 which houses “GFB, the Colchester Bookshop.” There is a fascinating array of second-hand books in here and I found it hard not to be distracted by them. However. I was in there to look at the building, not the books, so I pulled myself away and began to explore. Above the ground floor there is a variety of stories at different levels with a first floor in the south half and a second floor in the roof above the arch. From the second floor you can look into the roof space above the first floor.


On the ground floor is a brick fireplace which one again is pre 1700 in date. However, when you go up to the top floor the chimney attached to it dates from the 19th century onwards. On the ground floor there is a staircase, the westside of which forms the dividing the main building from the from extension. It still has windows in it so I think this was the front of the building before the extension was built which confirms my earlier thought that the extension is later.


Looking at the windows and the walls around them added to my suspicion that this is a wooden building with a brick façade at the front, back and passageway sides although the internal walls are decorated which hides what they are made of. I did spot an unused recess on the side of the first-floor landing where the original wood construction could be seen so this confirmed as did the walls on the second floor where the timber frame was exposed.


The roof is also timber frame. There were signs though that there some of the timbers had been removed or the timbers had previously been used elsewhere, either within this building or a different one. I could tell this because they had slots and holes cut in them which once attached them to other timbers, the position of some of which made no sense in their currently layout. So, the roof may have been reconstructed, altered, or restored at some point in the past.


So, I concluded from my observations that Nos. 7, 7A, 8 and 9 were once a large timber framed building with a central hall and a wing either side probably dating from the 15th century. The hall would have been built first and the wings slightly later. Before the 16th century halls like this were one large space from floor to ceiling with a central fire pit. The smoke from this would have had to find its own way out so the interior would have been very smoky.


These firepits were replace in the 16th century by brick fireplaces and chimneys. This also allowed for upper floors to be installed. This is what has happened in what is now No. 7. The south wing which is now No.9 had a 16th brick chimney extension added to it along with other extensions and brick chimneys added to it.


Nos. 7 and 7A have had brick facades added, probably in the 18th or 19th centuries and the brickwork of No.7A has been rendered. It has also had a chimney added at its northern end, probably in the 19th or early 20th centuries. The northern wing to the rear of No.7 A has been enlarged in No. 8 to make it into a house. It had brick chimneys and decoration added along with a modern extension.


The garden wall behind No.9 is intriguing. It is very old and in an odd place as it allows the garden of No.8 to go behind No.9. It was very likely put in when the properties were divided which is likely to have been before the 17th century looking at its construction. Nos. 7 and 7A are linked on the first storey and have a passage beneath them to reach No.8 behind. No.7 has a brick single storey extension at the front which is younger than the brickwork in the facades.


So that is what I have concluded from looking at the buildings. In my next blog post I will start looking at the sources to see how much I have got right (or wrong!) and start answering some of the other questions.

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