When investigations were carried out in 1992, dendrochronology (see panel) of the timbers visible within the roof pitch dated them to the early 1300s.
It appears that numbers 6 and 7 Buttermarket were originally a medieval hall house (possibly the home of the Marmions), with number 6 being the hall and number 7 the cross-wing. The alley that exists between the buildings today marked the position of a screens passage which separated the hall from the cross-wing.
The two-bay hall was a cruck construction, with one large space, open to the roof, almost eight metres high. The chimney and upper floor are probably a sixteenth-century insertion, and the roof was raised at
this time.
