Tudor Merchant's House
- Humphrey Rotsey's house, a large, high status merchant's house with five hundred year old original timbers. Exposed wattle and daub has survived and can still be clearly seen together with evidence of the building's former history as a Georgian and Victorian public house, fondly remembered locally as
the Saracen's Head. - The Queen's Room where Queen Henrietta Maria is reputed to have slept in 1643. It is a beautiful example of a Tudor interior where an original fireplace, faint remains of Tudor interior décor and window frame grooves can be examined. In 1643 the room witnessed the encampment of 3000 Royalist Horse troops and 30 companies of foot soldiers in the English Civil War.
- In the Gable Room you can see the original, newly exposed, Tudor gable, hidden for decades behind a later extension. The gable end, once the front of the house, looked out onto The Green.
- For academic study and by prior arrangement, it will be possible to view the extensive hidden roof timber work of the east range and our large archive.
