Archaeological investigations were carried out at 60-66 East Street (Charles Brown and Sons or Charlie Brown's), in conjunction with redevelopment (CBC planning application F/COL/01/1848).<1><2> Five archaeological excavation trenches and pits were hand dug within the building (T1-T3, T11 and T14). Six test slots of variable sizes and depths were dug to test the ground, mainly to the rear of the building (Test slots 1-6) and ten trenches were dug for services, new foundations and for the removal of contaminated soil within the building (T5, T7-T10, T12-T13 and T15-T17). The ground-level inside the building was reduced by hand. The ceramic evidence indicates a start date for occupation on the site in the 12th century or possibly slightly earlier. This phase of habitation was followed by the mid 14th-century timber-framed open hall building. A wall plinth, probably from the 14th-century building, was recorded under the floorboards in Room G12. This may have been for a timber wall which divided the open hall from a parlour. The eastern extent of the 14th century open hall is uncertain. A sequence of medieval and post-medieval clay floors and occupation levels were exposed within this part of the building, indicating uninterrupted occupation until the present day. The peg-tile hearth in Rooms G6/G7 is likely to relate to an intermediate phase of the building (not 14th century). However, the main hearth to the open hall remains undiscovered. There is nothing in the pottery assemblage which would suggest that the building was anything other than a domestic structure (although see Leigh Alston's interpretation, below). A second peg-tile hearth at the east end of the present (17th century) building, in Room G2, provided evidence of another medieval building adjacent to the 14th-century one. There was also evidence of substantial occupation and changing layout of the building in the 15th and 16th centuries. Three wall plinths of this period, made of various combinations of flint and peg-tile, roughly follow the alignment of the walls to the standing building. Various late post-medieval or modern brick partition wall foundations were exposed just under the floorboards. A ‘witch bottle’ was retrieved from behind the wooden laths at the exterior of no 60. This had probably been inserted as a protection against evil spirits in the 19th or 20th century. While CAT investigated below-ground archaeological remains, Leigh Alston analysed and recorded the structure in 2003.<2> Alston defined four separate building phases dating from the mid 14th century (c.1330-1360) to the mid 17th. (Dendrochronology was attempted but failed.<3>). This structure formed a cross-wing at the high-end of an open hall which lay to its right and has since been demolished (Phase Three now occupies its position). Like Phase Two, the ceiling and most of the ground-floor walls had unfortunately been removed in the 19th century (the building is said to have suffered damage in the 1884 earthquake) but several impressive features remain, including a fine 14th-century moulding that originally decorated an internal jetty projecting above the owner's head as he sat at the high table in his hall and on the other side of the building a traceried oak window head, two feet wide, 5 inches thick x 18 inches deep. During the 15th century a large and impressive new building was added to the left-hand side of Phase One, blocking its traceried window. This new structure contained a tall, arched gateway leading from the street to a rear courtyard (the left-hand gable, viewed from the front on East Street) along with ground-floor rooms on each side. The room to the left of the gate was built parallel to the street and has been demolished, but its gabled counterpart to the right remains. The building was fully jettied to both front and rear, with traceried windows to both elevations, so the courtyard was an impressive space in its own right (although a first-floor garderobe appears to have overhung it). A single traceried window still survives, overlooking the gate on the street. The exceptionally grand windows of Phases One and Two, combined with one of the tallest medieval gateways in the country (rising to 13 feet), would have created a dramatic visual effect that can have had few parallels in the town. A new hall, complete with brick chimney stack, was built on the site of the 14th-century hall in the middle decades of the 17th century. This building was jettied with twin dormer windows that lit the first-floor chamber, and appears to have been externally rendered and pargeted from the outset. A number of 17th-century wall paintings have been found inside, chiefly in the form of embellished arcades in grey pigment. Phase Four was added soon afterwards, replacing an earlier building, and is very similar in style to Phase Three. This too was rendered externally, and in consequence its timbers, which were never intended to be visible, are almost entirely recycled from earlier structures. This re-use of timber, coupled with the loss of most internal partitions, renders precise interpretation difficult, but the structure probably contained a pair of domestic houses. Altson suggests it seems unlikely that the medieval building was a normal domestic house, given its size, complexity and imposing fenestration. There is evidence of an enclosed, gallery-like stair in the 14th-century wing, of a kind usually found only in inns, and the gateway and lack of internal communication in the 15th-century extension supports such an interpretation. In terms of the East Street façade, the third gable from the left (i.e. west) is the first phase of construction, dating from the mid-14th century, against which the gateway and structure on the left was added in the 15th century. Stabilising braces at the feet of the gate-posts would have admitted pack animals but excluded wheeled vehicles. The two gables to the right represent Phase Three, dating to the mid-17th century. Like those of Phase Four, the main windows projected into the street, and have been lost. Of the two dormer gables, only the left-hand example now remains. The rest of the building to the right (Phase Four) was built soon after Phase Three in the mid-17th century. The timber-frame was not intended to be visible, and was plastered and pargeted from the outset.<2>