Ancient oak timbers and sawtooth brickwork on the shafts of a 1600s chimney: eastern jettied gable of the northern cross wing of the Swan Hotel in Lavenham, Suffolk, England, UK, based around a medieval guildhall which became the Wool Hall where merchants traded wool and cloth.
Lavenham, Suffolk, England, UK: half-timbered gable of the projecting northern cross wing of the Swan Hotel in Lady Street, with the sawtooth brickwork of a restored 17th century chimney behind it and to the right. The Swan Hotel, protected since 1958 as a Grade I Listed building, is one of the best known and most impressive of numerous ancient structures in Lavenham, a former medieval wool and cloth town where more than 300 buildings are listed as being of architectural or historical interest. The Swan was formed from three ancient buildings, one of which may have been an inn as early as the late 1400s. The oldest part of the complex, between the projecting wings, was a hall house, open all the way to its roof, that was used as a guildhall by the Guild of the Blessed Virgin or Guild of Our Lady, one of four medieval guilds in Lavenham. In the late 1600s, the guildhall was converted into the Lavenham Wool Hall, an important hub for the town’s main business in which the quality of the wool and cloth was verified and sales of it were agreed. The northern and southern wings, closed by eastern gables, feature exposed oak timber framing, leaded light windows, load-bearing bressummer cross beams and upper storey overhangs or jetties resting on exposed joists and sculpted oak corbels. The site, at Lady Street’s junction with Water Street, was at the centre of a national controversy in 1911 when Princess Louise, Duchess of Argyll, the fourth daughter of Queen Victoria, decided the entire structure should be dismantled and re-assembled at her home in Ascot, Berkshire. Amid strong protests, she eventually relented and the building instead became the Railway Women’s Convalescent Home. After the home closed, it was acquired by the Trust Houses hospitality group which restored it and opened it as a luxury hotel.
Size: 2832px × 4256px
Location: Lavenham, Suffolk, England, UK.
Photo credit: © Terence Kerr / Alamy / Afripics
License: Royalty Free
Model Released: No
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