6, 7 and 8, Brook Street

This is a timber-framed house, now divided into three separate residences, located in Brook Street, Great Bardfield. The original structure dates back to the 15th century and has undergone alterations in the 16th and 19th centuries. The house is timber framed and plastered, with exposed imitation framing. The roof is covered with handmade red clay tiles.

The building comprises a two-bay hall facing south, with an axial stack in the right bay, an original two-bay parlour/solar crosswing to the left, featuring a 19th-century central stack, and a two-bay crosswing to the right, constructed around 1570, replacing an original service bay. Single-storey extensions extend to the rear. The crosswings are two stories high, while the hall is one story with attic space. The facade features a four-window range of 19th-century Gothic Revival cast iron casements. The upper two windows in the gables are within dormers with 19th-century pierced bargeboards. There are three plain boarded doors. Both gables display 19th-century pierced bargeboards with fleur-de-lys pendants. The main stack incorporates grouped diagonal shafts, and the left stack has a diagonal shaft.

The floor of the hall and crosswing has risen approximately 0.8 meters relative to the original structure, likely due to silt deposition at the base of the hill. This area retains a blocked rear doorway with a four-centred head and the lower half of a rear unglazed window with a transom and five moulded mullions. The central tiebeam is molded to a "bowtell-in-great-casement" profile and was altered to accommodate an inserted doorway; the missing section was reused to frame that same doorway. The roof is a crownpost roof, smoke-blackened, with the central crownpost and braces now missing. A late 16th-century inserted floor is present, incorporating a chamfered axial beam with lamb's tongue stops.

The left crosswing (number 6) exhibits an underbuilt jetty, a hollow-moulded (but damaged) girt on the right side facing the hall, a rebate for the hall/parlour door, exposed close studding, and a crownpost roof with plain post and axial braces. The original floor has been raised approximately 0.5 meters. The right crosswing (number 8) displays a chamfered binding beam with lamb's tongue stops, exposed plain joists of horizontal section, an underbuilt jetty, diamond mortices for an unglazed window on the side, and a crownpost roof with plain post and thin axial braces. The combination of lamb's tongue stops and a crownpost roof in this crosswing is considered to be of particular historical significance, enabling precise dating to around 1570.