Historic Droitwich Its Streets and People

This is the oldest known domestic building in Droitwich.  It dates from 1340 and was originally an open hall built in timber framing, that is, a two storey height building which was open from floor to roof and constructed with massive vertical and horizontal straight and curved timbers.  This tells us its first (and probably later) owners would have been high status people. 

The property to the east (No. 35), now apparently almost entirely brick but with a few timbers visible inside, is thought to have been the service wing (food-related storage at ground floor with rooms of variable use above) to this open hall (and therefore is likely to have had two rooms on the ground floor and one or two chambers above).  To the west, the complex includes a magnificent two-storey solar cross-range which is now 31 High St, dated on stylistic grounds to around 1400 (private accommodation on the first floor for the owning family, probably with a shop and related storage on the ground floor).  It is likely that the three properties were built as a single complex in the 1340s, with the present solar cross-range perhaps replacing in 1400 an earlier part of the original structure.   Documentary evidence suggests that in the 1680s the complex was sub-divided into two properties (potentially what is now No. 31, and Nos. 33-35).