GfB, the Colchester Bookshop occupies the Great Hall of the medieval house known as Tymperleys, which has a long and fascinating history.

 

The earliest known name for the property on this site was "Lanseles" and is probably associated with John de Lansele, who became a Colchester burgess in 1334/5 and whose will was recorded during the Black Death in 1348/9. The heirs of a John Lansele paid for a fence at the bottom of the street in 1387.

 

The property then passed to the Stampe family. A Thomas Stampe of Writtle became a burgess in 1404/5 and it is likely that he built the Great Hall since the tie beam of the roof came from an oak tree felled a few years after 1386. This is a Queen Post roof with moulded purlins, which would have been very expensive, and can be seen close up in the top floor of the bookshop.

 

A later Thomas Stampe was a Colchester bailiff who died in office in 1481, after which the building passed to his daughter, Alice, who was born around 1465. She married Roger Timperley, brother of Sir John Timperley of Hintlesham in Suffolk. It was possible that the separate north wing of the house was built as the private family parlour and solar at this time.

 

Roger and Alice Timperley's son, John, inherited the building and married Margaret Roberts in 1510/11. They had three children before he died around 1515, (after which Margaret remarried and had another 17 children), and their surviving daughter, Frances, inherited.

 

Frances Timperley married George Horseman, but they sold the property in 1539 to Richard Weston of Prested, whose widow, Elizabeth, married Colchester's borough recorder, Jerome Gilberd. They had four children before she died: William (born 1544), Jerome, Robert and Margaret, after which Jerome married Jane Wingfield and had at least 7 more children.

 

When Jerome Gilberd died in 1583 he left his "Capitall Messuage and hed howse standinge in Trinitye parishe" to his eldest son "William Gylbard also Docter Gilbard". William Gilberd, or Gilbert, became one of the most important figures in the history of science, and has his own page here.

 

William never married and, when he died in 1603, willed that he should be buried in Holy Trinity church and left his "heade howse" to his nephew, William Harris. Five years later it was sold to John Argall, and it was sold again in 1622.

 

The history of Tymperleys becomes more obscure during the middle of the 17th century, when Colchester suffered from the Civil War siege in 1648 and the Great Plague in 1665. By the end of the 1660s the buildings had been subdivided into six cottages; three along the street frontage corresponding to the east end of the north wing and the two bays of the Great Hall.

 

Parts of the buildings were sold to the Furleys, a rich family of Quaker merchants, in 1687 before passing to the ownership of John Richardson, an apothecary. After his death in 1768 his properties were sold by auction, lot IV being "a large roomy good Dwelling-house, with a shop, a good Cellar, Washhouse, and two Gardens walled in" with adjoining cottages. The buyer, John Maples, sold to William Francis, attorney, in 1786.

 

By 1816, William Francis had converted the north wing back into one house and had the three cottages along the street frontage rebuilt as "a suite of Attorney's offices". The brick facades and carriage arch date from this rebuild.

 

The Francis family of solicitors occupied the house until the death of Louisa Kelly Francis in 1908, by which time the offices were occupied by Charles H. T. Marshall. The offices continued to be used by solicitors until the early 21st century and, since 2015, have been occupied by Greyfriars Books.