#ThrowbackThursday – Co-op, Dedham

Today we are remembering our work at the Co-Op on the High Street in Dedham for #ThrowbackThursday

In 2018 we completed an excavation at this site in advance of repairs and alterations to the building after a ram raid. This site was based in a fantastic area with lots of interesting history! Grade II* listed, the oldest section of the Co-op building was as timber-framed structure dating to c 1520 which formed the jettied hall range of a high-status merchant’s house 

Excavation revealed hearths from the open hall of an earlier medieval house, which was probably built somewhere between the mid 13th and late 14th century  This was replaced or remodelled c 1520 to become the jettied hall range previously identified.

Alterations to the merchant’s house in the 17th century included rebuilding part of the wall located on the street front. In the 18th to mid 19th century, the ground floor of the jettied hall was sub-divided into three rooms and a corridor, with a rear extension and outbuildings. The 1838 tithe lists the plot as a ‘house, baker’s shop and out offices’. By the mid 19th to the early 20th century the building had been extended and was listed as a bakers then as house furnisher’s W.H.Smith. The Co-operative society took over the premises in 1945 and rebuilt the street frontage in the 1950s

To learn more about this site, check out CAT report 1394: http://cat.essex.ac.uk/

Written by work experience student Poppy.