Brewery Shades

Crawley was granted a charter for a weekly market in 1202. Thereafter, what had been a village, on the London–Brighton road halfway between the two places, slowly grew into a market town and a centre for agriculture and ironworking. As the area became more prosperous, several timber-framed open hall-houses were built on both sides of the High Street (the name given to the part of the London–Brighton Road running through the town centre). One such building was the Shades (perhaps its original name), which was built in the 15th century. Estimates of the date range from "1450 or a little earlier" to 1500. After chimneys were invented, the open hall-house design fell out of favour, and many…

Although the medieval origins are now obscured behind a modern façade, substantial parts of the timber-framed original open hall-house layout remain inside. The oldest part of the building is the north–south range, parallel to the High Street. This has a gigantic tie-beam holding up a king post ceiling. The king post's structure includes purlins, chamfers and decorative mouldings. This façade has three modern gable ends and a tiled upper storey. Around the corner, facing Broadwalk, there is a twin-gabled modern façade, again with a tile-hung first floor and a stucco-faced ground floor. This part is a modern extension. At the northern end, there is another original wing running west to east:…