Part Of White Hart Hotel

This is a house, now forming part of the White Hart Hotel. It dates to the 15th century, with alterations in the 18th and 20th centuries. The building is timber framed, with plaster rendering and some exposed timber framing, covered by a roof of handmade red tiles. The main range consists of two bays facing north. A narrower, parallel range runs along the rear. To the rear left is a 3-bay wing from the 15th century, alongside a 16th-century one-bay extension, and two further 2-bay extensions. The first of these later extensions is weatherboarded on the upper storey, and both have slate roofs. A further one-bay wing is located to the rear right, followed by a 20th-century single-storey flat-roofed extension.

The main range and parallel range are three storeys high, while the wings are two storeys high. The ground floor of the main range features two 20th-century splayed windows in an early 19th-century style. Above them are three early 19th-century tripartite sashes, with 4-12-4 lights, and a dummy window painted on the plaster. The second floor has two tripartite sashes, again from the early 19th century, with 3-9-3 lights. A 20th-century six-panel door, set within an early 19th-century architrave with a semi-elliptical hood and blocked overlight containing radial tracery (blocked internally), is positioned between the bays. To the right of the doorway are 20th-century glazed double doors, set back, and a single 20th-century six-panel door. The roof is hipped to the right, short of the boundary, with a false front extending upwards over the first floor. Close to the eaves is a decorative triglyph frieze.

On the first floor of the right return of the left rear wing, there's a 18th- or early 19th-century sash window with 12 lights. Ground-floor wattle is visible in the left wall. A 20th-century brick pier supports an introduced chamfered beam with introduced joists to the left. To the right of the pier is an original chamfered axial beam, unstopped, with plain, horizontally sectioned joists connected by tenons with housed soffits; most of the joists in front of the beam are modern replacements using reclaimed timber. Limited first-floor framing is visible, but a post at the rear left shows evidence of charring, reportedly a result of an 18th-century fire. Late 18th-century chamfered beams with long lamb's tongue stops are found on the first floor.

The first wing to the rear left features jowled posts, longitudinal beams that are chamfered and unstopped, and plain, horizontally sectioned joists connected by tenons with unrefined soffit tenons. The roof construction includes an edge-halved and bridled scarf within the right wallplate, and a crownpost roof, with the base of one crownpost visible beneath the ceiling (the remainder is inaccessible). The adjacent extension which is lower than the main wing’s roof, the roof is similarly inaccessible. The later extension preserves some 16th-century floor structure, but it’s been much altered. The building was known as Maykynes in the time of Henry VIII. Details of it are recorded in a 1828 sale catalogue (Essex Record Office, B.2981).