NHER 12052 (Monument record) - Site of 28 to 32 Queen Street

March 1976. Photographic survey.
Wall runs in north-south direction and formed the rear boundary of properties in Queen Street. Much of the wall has been demolished to allow vehicular access to the rear of properties in Queen Street.
See (S1), (S2) and (S3) for further information.
A. Cattermole (King's Lynn UAD), 10 July 2019.

June 1976. RCHME building survey.
January 1977. Detailed recording during demolition.
October-November 1977. Watching brief on builders' trenches.
THIS ALSO INCLUDES DETAILS FROM THE BUILDING SURVEY CARRIED OUT BY RCHME IN JUNE 1976.
Deposits pre-dating the earliest floor associated with the stone building within Nos. 30 and 32 were recorded. A section running north-south parallel with the street frontage revealed a dark mixed layer containing occupation debris including three sherds of Early Medieval ware and one sherd of Grimston-type Thetford ware. Both fabrics suggest an eleventh or twelfth-century date for these deposits. The pointed end of a stake was recovered from mixed layers of peat and silt at a depth of 2.5m below pavement level roughly under the hearth within No. 28; for this a radiocarbon date of 940 ± 70 years bp was obtained (HAR-2539). Environmental samples taken during the excavations revealed an assemblage consisting principally of carbonised cereals, hazelnut shells and seeds of common arable weeds. Wetland species (rushes and stonewort) are also represented. Assemblages of this character are extremely common in medieval refuse deposits.
Two stone structures were built, presumably in the 12th century. The north building, represented by 28 Queen Street, was 21m x 7m overall; it ran back from the street and had rubble walls. Nothing remained above ground save at the west end, where the north, west and south walls apparently incorporated some masonry of this early period. The west wall was of clunch rubble, but had been refaced in brick and much altered in the 19th century. Towards the front of this building was a hearth of fired clay. Later in the medieval period this building was substantially remodelled, with a timber-framed rear wall resembling the unusual construction of Nos. 28-30 King Street.
The other presumed 12th century building lay under the site of No. 34, which was demolished to make space for the Burkitt Homes built in 1909. Only the foundations of its rubble north wall were seen below the south wall of No. 32.
At the very beginning of the 13th century a new house was erected between these two buildings, sharing their side walls. Standing on the site of Nos. 30 and 32, this stone house had an open hall to the north and a storeyed section to the south. All that survived above ground level was the masonry front wall, which was straight-jointed against the other two buildings. The masonry front wall, 0.7m thick and faced in even courses with shelly oolitic Lincolnshire limestone ashlar, stood 5.5 m high above the original floor level, which in turn was 0.5m below the modern pavement. Of the hall, a window-head and the jambs of a door remained. The window was of two lights whose pointed heads were within a round-headed tympanum, the hood-mould having been cut back flush with the wall face.
Of the southern, two-storeyed, section the lower storey had been replaced by a 19th-century shop front built on the original footings. At first-floor level there was the larger part of a round-headed door. Only the footings of the rear wall survived; at its south end was the north jamb of a door. Adjacent to this were the footings of two piers of added masonry, either buttresses or forming part of a structure such as a porch. A larger mass of masonry of uncertain function had been added against the inner face of the wall. In the hall was a hearth of fired clay placed towards the rear wall. The division between hall and storeyed section was presumably timber-framed, for the position of the doors on the front wall left no space for a masonry cross-wall nor was there any evidence for such a wall on the inner faces of the front and rear walls.
Above the floor of this hall was a layer of water-lain silt, above which floor was associated with the rebuilding of the rear wall. The new wall was of rubble and thinner than the earlier walls. Above another layer of waterlain silt came a thick layer of soil containing large quantities of broken roof-tiles and a few sherds of green-glazed Grimston ware, indicating a further phase of building or repair some time before the 15th century, although no structural features could be associated with this. Deposition of a further layer of silt was followed by the construction of a large east-to-west trench across the building as a foundation for a partition wall.
About the beginning of the 17th century the house was finally reconstructed as a two-storey building with a timber-framed rear wall and a roof of reused medieval timbers. The rear wall, of close studding, survived only on the first floor of No. 32. The roof incorporated a number of smoke-blackened rafters 6.5 m long with notched-lap joints, indicating a former roof with collars and either parallel rafters or scissorbraces. It is possible, but not provable, that these rafters belonged to the original roof of this house, or an early replacement. The north gable wall was at least partially rebuilt in rubble and brick, and a fireplace built against it. The axial beams also belong to this period. In the late 17th or early 18th century, wooden-framed mullion-and-transom windows were inserted in the first floor. By the mid-18th century the building had been sub-divided into two tenements and an internal brick stack was inserted to heat the south tenement, No. 32. In the early 19th century a two-storey rear wing was built behind No. 32, and later in the century the ground-floor stage of the front wall was cut away to provide doors and a shop window; the wall was rendered at the same time. In 1909 the south wall was rebuilt entirely. Whatever earlier buildings existed behind No. 30 were largely demolished late in the 19th century to make way for a large lean-to. The front wall was plastered in 1913 during extensive alterations.
In plan, the early 13th-century house consisted of an open hall and a two-storeyed block apparently covered by a single roof parallel to the street. Two-cell hall-houses of similar plan are known from medieval towns over most of England, but few examples survive from before the 15th century. Here the hall is unusually short in relation to its width. The function of the storeyed section is not clear. Usually the first floor is a more private inner room, while the ground floor was devoted to whatever minor domestic or commercial functions the owner found appropriate. In this house the first-floor room has both a door and a window on the front wall. There was no surviving evidence for external stairs to this door, but its position, overlooking the medieval waterfront, suggests the possibility that the room was used at least partly for the storage of merchandise. The relative social status of the house is indicated by its superior building materials, which had been imported from quarries west of Peterborough, and by its competent architectural details. The position of both houses suggests that they could have been occupied by merchants.
See (S4), (S5) and (S6) for further information.
Finds recovered during this work have been deposited with the Norwich Castle Museum (NWHCM : 1999.314).
E. Rose (NAU), 7 June 1982. Amended A. Cattermole (King's Lynn UAD), 10 July 2019.

After 1982. Dendrochronological dating of timbers from No. 28.
A failure to date the six oak timbers sampled was reported in (S6). However, since then further reference chronologies have become available that have allowed determination of three convincing dates for timbers sampled. The likely felling date for QS283, which was the only timber that included sapwood, is 1295 (95% confidence). The earliest likely felling dates for the two other timbers which included no sapwood were 1167 for QS282 and 1164 for QS286. It should be noted that QS282 (last ring dated 1137) and QS283 (last ring dated 1274) were part of the same structure.
See (S7) for further details.
A. Cattermole (King's Lynn UAD), 27 February 2020.

See secondary file for photographs, newspaper articles, correspondence and further details.