The Reading and Coffee Rooms is a Grade II listed building in the Braintree local planning authority area, England. First listed on 15 October 1984. Village hall. 1 related planning application.
The Reading and Coffee Rooms
- WRENN ID
- haunted-tower-quill
- Grade
- II
- Local Planning Authority
- Braintree
- Constituency
- Braintree MP: Sir James Cleverly (Con)
- Country
- England
- Date first listed
- 15 October 1984
- Type
- Village hall
- Address
- The Reading and Coffee Rooms, the Street, Gosfield, CO9 1TJ
- OS grid reference
- TL 783 296
- Coordinates
- 51.93669, 0.59228
- Source
- Historic England listing
Description
The Reading and Coffee Rooms is a building that is still used as a Village Hall, dating from around 1850 to 1860 and built for Samuel Courtauld. It is constructed of red brick with gault and black brick dressings. The building features bargeboards and plaster and batten decoration on the porch and crosswing gables. The roof is adorned with red plain and ornate tiles, along with red and black ridge tiles and fleur-de-lis tiles.
The left range is a single storey with a forward gabled porch on the right side, while the right crosswing is two storeys high. The windows are arranged in a 2:1 pattern with three-light casements; the left ones have transoms and are topped with black and gault segmental pointed arches. The building has brick rusticated quoins and a porch door made of rails and muntins, featuring ornate iron hinges. Above the door is a stone plaque that reads "So that you may live," and another stone plaque above the ground floor right window states "Reading and Coffee Room."
There is also a 20th-century matching brick single storey entrance porch on the left with six-panel double doors. This building is located in the village center and is part of the complex built for Samuel Courtauld, noted for its social historical interest.
Local climate
The Reading and Coffee Rooms sits in one of the driest parts of the UK, with an average of 680 mm of rain a year. This makes it drier than 99% of listed buildings in the UK. Its exposure to wind-driven rain is lower than that of 75% of listed buildings.
It experiences an average of 28 freeze-thaw cycles a year, fewer than 70% of listed buildings. Of these, 13 follow at least 1 mm of rain in the preceding 48 hours. Average temperatures at this location have risen by 0.3°C per decade since 1991.
Averages for 1991–2020; temperature trend 1991–2025. Figures describe the wider area (a grid cell of roughly 10 km), not the individual site. Contains modified Copernicus Climate Change Service information 2026.
More on this building
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- No EPC on record for this property
- No sale records on file
- Related listed building consents — 1 application
- Detailed attributes — period, style, materials, features
- Flood risk assessment
- Radon risk assessment
- Weather exposure and heating demand — rain and frost month by month and year by year, wind direction, solar and humidity
Matched applications, energy data and sale records are assembled automatically and may contain errors. Flag incorrect data.
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