In my previous two blog posts I have been investigating the property known as Tymperleys in Trinity Street and to try and verify various things that are said about it. You will need to read them before you carry on with this blog for it to all make sense.
Continuing my investigation, the next resource I found was an online transcript of a book about the “Court rolls of the borough of Colchester” Volume 1 (1310 1352). The details of this resource can be found at https://archive.org/details/courtrollsofboro01colc and the actual transcript at https://archive.org/stream/courtrollsofboro01colc/courtrollsofboro01colc_djvu.txt
The entry in it which mentions Tymperleys in it says:
“JOHN LANSELE (or de Lanshi.i:).— Admitted a burgess 1334-5. He was a man of property, but took no part apparently in local government. He had a tenement in the Head Ward and also was tenant of land " on the common river bank." He is of interest as probably his dweUing, with considerable grounds, stood in Trinity Street, where in later (Tudor) times " Tymjierleys" the birthplace of the famous Dr. William Gilbert!, was built." Tymperleys " was "anciently called Lanseleys alias Lawsells " (deed of 1687). It is likely that this name came from John Lansele or de Lanscle and incidentally it may be assumed that this name was pronounced" Launceley." Subsequently this famous " capitall messuage " was called "Stampes" because it came into possession of one Thomas Stampe. Roger Tymperlcy married Alice Stampe, sister and heir of Thomas and then the house became Tymperleys — its present name. Morant speaks of its earliest name as Lanseles. John Lan.sele's doings as recorded in these Court Kolls are of no special interest. He died in the Great Pestilence of 1348, his will being proved 1348-9. Litigation which he commenced against Warin atte Welle and William de Hadleigh on May 10, 1346, seems to have been dragging on at the time of liis death, and it was still unsettled Oct. 4, 1351. "The heirs of John Lansele" are mentioned in the Oatli Book, p. 212. They paid 4d. a year for what is called John de Lansele's " paling [in the Head Ward] in front of Walter Rompour's tenement," which means I think, Walter le Trumpour's, for this personage had a tenement in 1337, opposite to the house ne.\t to Scheregate, and this might have been adjoining "Lanseles," now Tymper-levs, in Trinity Street. The expression "heirs of John Lansele" suggests that he left no children as direct heirs. No one else of his name is mentioned in any Colchester records as far as I can ascertain.”
It has been scanned in by the archive that created the text file so there are some letters which haven’t been scanned correctly, but it is readable although the language is a bit archaic. From it we can see that the earliest record of the land here shows it belonged to a John Lansele and it was named after him. It was then called “Stampes” after a Thomas Stampe who owned it. A Roger Tymperley married Stampe’s sister and heir Alice and then it became known as Tymperleys. So, we have an origin of it being called Tymperleys, but it is not clear quite when and no reference to a John Tymperley, or any connection anyone with that name had with the house or the Duke of Norfolk. Anyone being Steward to him would have been a very important person in the town and would have been mentioned.
However, these records only go up to 1352 so it may be that the John Tymperley was after this date. There is a Volume II and III of the Court Rolls. I had to sign up to the Family Search site run by the Mormons where Volume II is available for free. It runs from 1353 to 1367. These was nothing in there on Tymperley. Volume III is not available online for free. You can only buy it and it is expensive. It is available to view in various libraries around the country, but that is beyond what I want to do. Reading other sources online it probably doesn't contain anything of use.
I then did a general search online for Tymperleys. This of course brings up lots of references to the current tearoom operating there so I had to narrow my search a bit to “Tymperleys Colchester History”. The first result I got when doing this was from https://www.layermarneytower.co.uk/about/tymperleys/#:~:text=Tymperleys%20was%20built%20around%20the,in%20the%20late%2016th%20century which said “Tymperleys was built around the 1490s for John Tymperleys (d. 1505) who served as a councillor and steward for the Duke of Norfolk’s holdings in Colchester and the surrounding area. Built as a smart town house, reflecting it owner’s importance, and then was expanded considerably in the late 16th century. Today it stands in its own walled garden, an oasis of calm in the centre of Colchester.”
It mentions John, his link to the Duke of Norfolk and some dates, but we have no sources cited and so we don’t know if any of it is accurate or just repeating hearsay. A lot of the other results were similar.
It does get mentions in the local press. At https://www.gazette-news.co.uk/news/11816978.theatre-on-the-menu-at-converted-tearoom/ I found the above article dated 26th February 2015 which mentions the clock museum that was run by the Council in the building that closed in 2010. It also mentions that it was taken over by the Charrington family, who also run Layer Marney Tower, in December 2013, and they opened it as a tearoom in 2014. At the time of the article renovations were ongoing. Oddly it has the line “The Fifties servants’ quarter has been replaced with a new modern glass-fronted kitchen.” This seems to imply that there were servants’ quarters as mentioned in number 10 of my commonly quoted “facts” above, but that they were there in the 1950s rather than in earlier times.
Another article dated 2nd January adds some more information. (https://www.gazette-news.co.uk/news/14985530.colchester-clock-museums-time-has-passed-but-archived-images-keep-its-memory-alive/) As well as information on the clock museum and its fate, the article details various changes made to the building which included it being plastered over and having its original windows being replaced with Georgian ones in the 18th century. The plastering over of timber buildings was not uncommon back then as they were out of fashion.
As an aside, timber Timbers were often left unpainted to weather naturally, while the panels were painted with pigmented limewash. Blackening is a natural aging effect of the wood. Sometimes both the beams and panels were limewashed. In the 18th century when stucco and stone finishes became fashionable and timber houses weren’t, they often had their timbers plastered over. Stucco is a cement-type mixture made of Portland cement, lime, sand, and water.
In the 19th and 20th century, many houses were restored and their timbers exposed. The practice of painting the beams black and the panels white, in part to emphasise the intricate patterns of the timber frame, became established. Recently fashions have changed again, and now some houses have had paint removed from beams to reveal the natural colour of the weathered wood, while the panels are limewashed in soft earth tones.
It goes onto say that in the 1950s it was owned by local businessman Bernard Mason. He removed the plaster front and he oversaw a major renovation which beginning in 1956, restored the rundown building to how he thought it would have looked before the Georgian alterations. It looks like he was following the fashion trend I mentioned above. This old postcard I found at https://www.camulos.com/postcards/01.htm shows how it used to look before Mason’s restoration when it still had the plastered front on it.
It was taken by W. Gill. It is undated, but the earliest I can find it is in the Official Guide of the Colchester Town Council, which was one of the Mate’s Illustrated Guides, published in 1908. I happened to come across it in Colchester Library whilst I was researching something else. Here is the same view today:
These articles led me to look at another useful resource that Colchester City Council provides online. This is records of planning applications made within the Borough and City. Full online records only go back to 1990 and some of the early ones can lack detail. Before 1990 the information online is really limited and you would have to go to the Planning Department to see the full records.
However, we can see from the articles that when the clock museum closed it was converted into the current café and alterations were made. This would require planning permission especially on a Listed Building. Now I will give a caveat here, planning applications only seek permission from the Council to do something that requires permission.
Such permissions are not always granted so you need to check the status of the application as well as what was asked for. Even if permission is granted, the changes are not always carried out in reality and if they are, sometimes not all the changes asked for are actually done, or they might not be exactly what was asked for as there can be some wriggle room and “interpretation” of the permission given.
Still, it was worth a look. Most of the applications were not of much interest, but on Application No: 131808 submitted in 2013 I struck gold in the form of a Design and Access Statement. You will need to look it up for yourself as the URLs seem to be temporary so I can’t give you a working link.
It has a nice summary of the history which we have found so far and we can assume its authors would have done their research as it forms part of a legal process although we have no guarantee of course. It says that in 1956 as well as removing the Georgian additions, the front bay windows were added and also the single storey extension which now forms the entrance to the café. These were made to look old. As the extension has certainly been altered to make the entrance to the current café, maybe it was originally built to house domestic staff in the 1950s and is the “servants’ quarters” mentioned in the article above.
Whilst No. 8 looks old today, we can see that its exterior has been heavily mucked about with over time and even as recent as 70 years ago, it looked quite different. This is why it is important to research the history of a building and not just go by its current appearance.
In all of this we still find no trace of John Tymperley though. So, in my next blog post we will go looking for him and any links he may have had with the Dukes of Norfolk.