Colchester Archaeological Trust

CAT Report 552: summary

Survey of the buildings behind the North Hill Hotel, 51 North Hill, Colchester, Essex June 2010
by P Crummy (with contributions from R Shackle)

Date report completed: June 2010
Location: North Hill Hotel, 51 North Hill, Colchester, Essex
Map reference(s):
File size: 11.5 MB kb
Project type: Survey
Significance of the results: **
Keywords: timber framed, hall house, Rose, boots, shoes, Peveril, Hotel

Summary. A timber-framed building at the rear of the North Hill Hotel (formerly the Peveril Hotel) was surveyed in advance of planned alterations to provide more accommodation and communal space for its residents. The survey revealed the presence of a previously unrecognised hall-house, and documentary research showed when and why part of this building had been converted into a 'warehouse'. The building originated as a 15th- or early 16th-century open hall-house of at least two bays with a cross-passage and (presumably) a two-storeyed service end of uncertain shape and plan. The hall-house appears to have been converted into a lobby-entrance house in the 17th century when a floor was inserted into the hall to create a two-storey block and a brick chimney-stack was built in the cross-passage to heat the new rooms in the old lobby and service end. The latter was replaced, perhaps at the same time, by the present three-bayed crosswing which has a jettied south gable wall. Two extensions were added later: a small two-storeyed building perhaps of the 18th century and a single-storeyed 19th-century building which was probably a stable. Around 1876-7, the crosswing was adapted with the insertion of large windows and double doors on both floors to create a warehouse-cum-workshop for upholsterer Charles Day. A few years later, Day had to sell up because of debt and his warehouse became a workshop for the manufacturing of boots and shoes, at first by George Pung Hazel, then by G P Halls, and finally by Rose and Co Boot and Shoe Manufacturers, a company which primarily produced (and still produces) advertising calendars.