Thwaite Queen's Head
previously known as Low House, High-Low House
closed mid-19th cent
last updated 11/04/2015
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.
After Phelps Stokes death in 1944, his estate was bought for the property, and was torn down to make way for a modern structure****
(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)