Carpenters Arms surviving Tudor window is a portal to past

Over the years I have researched its story and have published a number of newspaper and magazine articles about it.

These have mainly focused on its heritage as a public house. Beer first started being served there in 1847 under John Pitcairn of the Maldon Brewery and it then transferred to Gray and Sons in 1865.

I have details of the various tenant landlords from those times right through to present day, but as interesting as that “tale of ale” is, the building itself is older – much older.

However, trying to unpick its true origins can be complex and problematic. Deeds survive back to 1684, but architecturally there are clues that pre-date even those days.

Some have suggested that it is a building with mid 14th Century origins, but the official Grade II Listing places it c.1500 (albeit with major 19th Century works).

In common with most other buildings of that age, it has been altered, re-modelled and added to over the years. However, its surviving timber frame skeleton offers clues to its real antiquity.

One of the original upright timbers, thought to be the un-carved trunk of a tree, stands behind the bar, somehow willing you to find out more.

• The pub as it is today

The experts have described the layout as a “two-bay timber-frame of cross-wing like character” and have been particularly impressed by the tie-beam with crown-post roof, the bracing, floor joists and knee-like brackets.

Interestingly, they have also suggested that the narrow-gabled, two-storey rear extension is late 16th Century.

Then there is (or at least there was) that old window.

When I first started drinking in The Carpenters in the 1970s, hanging on the wall of the saloon bar was an old wooden window frame.

You might well remember it. I was told at the time that it had been discovered behind plaster during alterations in the 1960s.

It has since disappeared, but could have offered us an important dating-clue. By way of confirmation, a newspaper cutting of August 10, 1973, describes it as a “400 year-old window, found during renovation work sometime ago”.

It goes on to explain that “workmen discovered the window when they pulled down a chimney breast”.

According to the then barman, Eric Goodey, it hadn’t “even been touched apart from brushing it down” and it then found a place in the oak-beamed saloon bar.

• The window in 1973

Five years after that press report, the author James Wentworth Day included a reference to it in his book ‘A Garland of Hops’ (EAML 1978).

He quotes an interview with “the present landlord, Reg Hurst” (whom I knew well). Reg harped back to his predecessor’s time. “Mr Murphy’s real treasure,” he said, “hangs on the wall in the saloon bar. It is the complete wooden framework of an original Tudor window. When he uncovered it he sent it to Colchester Museum for expert opinion. They verified it as being 400 years old at least”.

These reports are really tantalising and make you want to study the window in more detail, but sadly we can no longer get close up to the real thing.

Thankfully that 1970s newspaper report included a photograph and so I showed it to a buildings conservationist. He identified it as having “ovolo-moulded mullions”.

The earliest examples of this type of frame in Essex apparently date from the 1590s and they are the most common type of window in use throughout the first half of the 17th Century.

There are some external rebates which would have housed lead-glazed panels. This early lead glazing was quite fragile and so it has “stiffening bars” to reinforce them against the pressure of the wind. Does all this fit, one wonders, with the late (very late) 16th Century alteration work?

By the 17th Century the building formed part of a small-holding, called variously ‘Pyersman Place’ and ‘Drakes’, with an orchard known as ‘Adhams’, barns, stables, a cow house and a blacksmiths.

• The Tudor window frame as it survives today

Who looked through that window in those days and what would they think of the place today? The opening probably became redundant when it was remodelled as a pub during Victoria’s reign, only to be rediscovered when further work took place in the 20th Century.

It hung in pride of place within living memory, only to be discarded by a later landlord.

I often wondered what had happened to it. Was it burnt, did it rot away, or was it thrown into a skip?

Then there was a breakthrough - I was told that it had been rescued and, through a third party, was sent a photograph.

It looks like it has come apart at the joints and the stiffening bars have gone, but apart from that it was like seeing a picture of an old friend. I am told that the current custodian is to have it restored and quite rightly so.

After all it is a remarkable survival and, you might say, a real window into our past.