Ben Fosters is a Grade II listed building in the Braintree local planning authority area, England. First listed on 17 May 1985. House. 1 related planning application.

Ben Fosters

WRENN ID
watchful-buttress-linden
Grade
II
Local Planning Authority
Braintree
Constituency
Braintree MP: Sir James Cleverly (Con)
Country
England
Date first listed
17 May 1985
Type
House
Address
Ben Fosters, Howe Street, Finchingfield, CM7 4PG
OS grid reference
TL 702 360
Coordinates
51.99659, 0.47825
Source
Historic England listing

Also on this page: sale history · related consents · flood risk · radon risk · weather exposure · detailed attributes ↓

Description

Ben Fosters is a house dating from around 1600, with alterations made in the 20th century. It is timber framed and plastered, topped with a thatched roof. The house has four bays facing southeast, featuring an axial stack in the second bay from the right that creates a lobby entrance. There is a 19th-century external stack at the left end and a 20th-century single-storey extension at the rear of the left end, which has a catslide roof. The building is one storey with attics and has a two-window range of 20th-century casements, with the upper windows set in eyebrow dormers. The front features a door within a 20th-century gabled porch that has a plain tiled roof. Inside, the house displays jowled posts with arched braces set into the exposed studs, along with a clasped purlin roof that includes curved wind braces. The axial beams are stop-chamfered with lamb's tongue stops, and there are exposed joists of vertical section supported on pegged clamps. A winder stair is located behind the stack.

Local climate

Ben Fosters sits in a drier-than-average part of the UK, with an average of 700 mm of rain a year. This makes it drier than 90% of listed buildings in the UK. Its exposure to wind-driven rain is lower than that of 77% of listed buildings.

It experiences an average of 32 freeze-thaw cycles a year, fewer than 58% of listed buildings. Of these, 16 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
  • Sale history — 2 transactions since 1996
  • 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
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