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Thwaite Queen's Head
Thwaite Queen's Head
also traded as Low House, High-Low House
East, 52.27684,1.09985
Closed: mid-19th century
A140
grid reference TM 115 688
The pub is shown on this old OS map from 1884 (interactive map).
It would appear that the Queens Head was in part of a large Tudor house formerly called High-Low house in Thwaite. This house dated back to at least 1597****
According to Wikipedia:
In 1910, Isaac Newton Phelps Stokes dismantled a large timber framed house, formerly the Queens Head, located next to what is now the A140. He transported it in 688 crates from Tilbury docks to the USA, where it was reconstructed using the timbers of a wrecked English ship, on a hill overlooking Long Island Sound near Greenwich, Connecticut. It was renamed 'High Low House' - one of its former names whilst standing in Thwaite.
According to the book, "Connecticut; a guide to its roads, lore, and people" (1938):
The High Low House, Round Hill Road, a composite structure, combining a 16th-century English manor house, transported to this country from England in 1911, and a granite Tudor residence, erected in 1905 by I. N. Phelps Stokes, architect and owner, is on private grounds, not open to the public. British supervision of British-American labor assured the sympathetic handling of the 16th-century material. The English dwelling for which the residence is named was erected in Ipswich, Suffolk County, England, about 1507. Built of half timber and brick, with seven sharp gables in its red tiled roof, the old house has a great 12-panel, heavily studded oaken entrance door with a Gothic top and original hardware, a hand-carved header and broad carved lintel. Hand-carved half -columns rise to Gothic brackets; a hand-carved frieze on the second-floor end-overhang, and random brick and timber panels spread to either side of the entrance. The heavy corner posts and brackets are elaborately hand-carved, and weathered rift-grain oak shows wherever the timbering is revealed.
In another book called 'The Norwich Road' by Charles G Harper**** and published 1901, (Harper was a prolific writer and illustrator) the entry for Thwaite includes:
Thwaite, less than a mile beyond Brockford, numbers few cottages. Beyond it, where the hitherto flat road makes a descent, is in local parlance, 'Thwaite Low House,' not so called on account of any disreputable character it may have once earned, but from its situation.... While the 'Low House' has fallen upon times so irredeemably evil that it has been long untenanted and is now a veritable scarecrow of a house, with gaping holes in its walls and windows battened up.
After Phelps Stokes' death in 1944, his estate was bought for the property, and was torn down to make way for a modern structure****
Gallery
Historical interest
A reference appears in the Ipswich Journal, April 15th & 22nd 1727***, to Mr John Mason at the Queen's Head in Thwaite, near Stoke-Ash. (And again on February 10th & 17th 1728)
A reference appears in the Ipswich Journal,, May 4th 1728*** to a Cock Match at John Mason's House, the Queen's Head in Thwaite.
A reference appears in the Ipswich Journal, July 27th 1734***, to a Maine of Cocks at the Queen's-Head, Thwaite. (A March 1735 edition of paper refers to the landlord as John Mason).…
Landlords
(Most pub, location & historic details collated by Nigel, Tony or Keith - original sources are credited)
(** historic book detail from Stuart Ansell)
(*** historic newspaper information from Bob Mitchell)
(** historic building details from http://siris-archives.si.edu/ipac20/ipac.jsp?uri=full=3100001~!245781!0)
Old OS map reproduced with the permission of the National Library of Scotland.