Curd Hall

Curd Hall is a house dating back to the 17th century, with extensions from the 18th century and around 1900. The house is timber-framed and has plaster walls, covered by a roof of handmade red plain tiles. It has five bays facing north, with a central stack forming a lobby entrance, and an original two-bay wing to the left rear. A shorter wing is located to the right rear, along with a lean-to extension that forms a catslide roofline with the original wing. An extension to the right, built around 1900, is constructed of stock bricks with red brick dressings. The house has two stories and unlit attics.

On the ground floor, there is one early 19th-century sash window of 12 lights, one early 19th-century tripartite sash window of 4-12-4 lights, and two 20th-century casement windows. The first floor has three early 19th-century sash windows, each of 12 lights. A 20th-century gabled porch covers the side entrance. A projecting gable sits above the post between the two left bays, featuring a moulded bressumer and a truncated finial. Jowled posts are present. The timber frame reveals slightly curved tension braces trenched inside close studding, nailed at the crossings, on the upper storey only.

Inside, the ground-floor rooms of the main range have chamfered axial beams, with lamb's tongue stops over the left room, and no stops over the right room. The right room displays exposed plain joists of vertical section and a 20th-century brick nogging in a wall. A large wood-burning hearth is located to the left, featuring 0.33-meter brickwork jambs, repaired and re-pointed in the 20th century. Another wood-burning hearth faces to the right, with an internal recess in the rear jamb, and a chamfered mantel beam with lamb's tongue stops, showing numerous rushlight burns and holes for a former spit. The lobby-entrance shows evidence of original posts being removed, leaving wattle fixings and mortices, indicating an offset doorway originally nearer the parlour. A face-halved and bladed scarf is visible in the wallplate above. The first-floor rooms of the main range have straight, chamfered tiebeams, with chamfered bridging beams bearing lamb's tongue stops and joining to form original attic floors. A blocked hearth is found in the left room, while the right room has a small hearth with rear splays and a depressed brick arch. A blocked window of early glazed type, with two ovolo-moulded mullions, two of three diamond saddle bars, and an inserted and nailed head, is set into the rear wall of the right room.

The roof is a clasped purlin roof. The original rear wing has a chamfered binding beam, jowled posts with offset tenons, and a chamfered straight internal tiebeam with run-out stops. Curd Hall was illustrated in the Royal Commission on Historical Monuments (Little Coggeshall) as having two projecting gables. The timber frame was further illustrated by C.A. Hewett in "Some East Anglian Prototypes for Early Timber Houses in America." An estate map of 1735 depicts the house with three gables and two chimneys. A tithe award from 1853 links the house to a farm of 190 acres.