between them. Both appear to have been stone houses,¹² that is, with walls of flint and chalk lump, with stone dressings, and both may have been built before 1200.
   In Cogan House these walls survive right up to wall-plate, or roof-level, only the front wall being missing. They are of considerable thickness, measuring 2 ft. 4 in., or 80 cm. through. On the first floor rear may be observed two recesses, some 3 ft. wide, which may have been external windows before the great hall was added by William Cokyn at the rear. This hall, which was 36 ft. wide (10-92 m.), was obviously intended to be something larger than an ordinary town house of the time.
   The original stone house was probably of the first-floor hall-type with an undercroft at street level. This last could be then easily converted for use as buttery, pantry, etc., by inserting four of the new type pointed doorways leading into the rear hall. The one through which one still enters the house must have been originally the entrance doorway, and a corresponding opening at the far end was presumably the stairs door. In the centre are twin doorways, now blocked, doubtless for buttery and pantry.

The Aisled Hall (Figs. 1, 3, 4, 5)
   The hall was aisled, that is, it had free-standing posts as in a barn, and four of these posts still survive, though three of them are now encased. The fourth is inside a cupboard on the left of the great Tudor fireplace in the kitchen, and bears simple mouldings (Fig. 5, B, Q). The surviving section of the hall is one bay of 18 ft. (5-48 m.), and the Tudor wing, which is in width another 18 ft., presumably occupies the missing second bay.
   The roof is in part intact and undisturbed. It is heavily soot-coated, and with long cross-bracing and archaic 'notched lap joints', both 'secret' and plain (Pig. 5, B, D), and may be ascribed with confidence to the period of Cokyn's Hospital.

Some Occupants of the House after 1230
   Cokyn's Hospital ceased to be used as such about the year 1230, when it passed again into private hands. The records of Christchurch and of the city ¹³ provide many intriguing glimpses into the lives of people who dwelt in this ancient place, and Dorothy Gardiner, the historian, who actually lived there for some years after the Second
   ¹²  William Cokyn's own house, on the east side of the hospital, is described at the time of its 
              sale to William Samuel as, '. . . the whole tenement with all the edifices of wood and 
              stone . . .'. Somner, op. cit., 61-62.
  ¹³  A former solicitor of Canterbury, Alderman 0. R. Bunco, spent many years copying the city
              records, which work is now a treasured possession of the city library. Extracts of this
             appeared in the Kentish Gazette (16 September, 1800, if.) and subsequently in Ancient
            Canterbury, Records of Alderman Bunce.