Paycocke's

This early 16th-century town house in Coggeshall was built by the wealthy wool merchant John Paycocke on the occasion of his son’s marriage. Coggeshall was a major cloth-making town in Tudor times, and the prosperity and commercial success of the Paycocke family is reflected in the elaborate decoration of the house. The long, close-studded street façade has 5 oriels on the upper floor; below, a beam running its full length is carved with a variety of curious figures, including an upside-down dragon, a head on a flower stalk, and a small person apparently diving into a lily. Inside there are superior wood-carvings, including a magnificent ceiling in the great hall which carries the merchant mark of the Paycockes – an ermine tail. Paycocke’s was restored in 1905 by its then owner, Lord Buxton, a descendant of a family which had occupied it during the late 16th century.

Paycocke's, Essex

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Paycocke's House is a splendid example of a timber-framed building completed by 1505. The original frieze across the front includes the initals of Thomas Paycocke who died in 1518, the Paycocke trade sign of an ermine tail and other naturalistic designs. The Paycocke family were living in Coggeshall by the mid 15th-century when nearby Colchester was the centre of a great cloth-making area, and the family became rich clothiers having started as wealthy grazier-butchers. The Paycockes and their near relatives, the Buxtons, owned Paycocke's House until it was sold in 1746. It was bought back in 1904 by Charles Buxton, later Lord Noel-Buxton, a direct descendant of the Buxton family.

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