Chapel Cottage

TL 6730 GREAT BARDFIELD HIGH STREET (south-east side)

8/194 Chapel Cottage (formerly listed with Place house 2.5.53 as outbuilding) GV II

Ancillary building of uncertain purpose. C16, altered in C18/C19. Plastered brick and timber framing, partly weatherboarded, roofed with handmade red clay tiles. 2 bays facing NW, of a building which originally extended further to the SW. Garage with lean-to tiled roof to left. 2 storeys and attics. One 2-light window with roll-moulded wooden mullion and rectangular leaded panes. One group of 3 original windows of plastered brick, with segmental-pointed heads, with recessed spandrels and vertical iron bars. Plain boarded door. No front windows on first floor. Original sprockets below eaves. In rear wall, original wooden doorway with 4-centred head and recessed spandrels. The right return wall has inserted timber framing, clad with weatherboarding. The interior has richly moulded transverse and axial beams. There is little doubt that this was built by Serjeant William Bendlowes, but the local tradition that it was a chapel seems dubious historically, and is not confirmed by the characteristics of the building. It remains a possibility that it was built for some institutional purpose, or as a dower house. (S. Hyland, An Elizabethan Self-made Man of Law, Essex Countryside, March 1983, 22-4).

Listing NGR: TL6739530326