Finchingfield House

Finchingfield House is a house dating to the mid-16th century, with alterations made in the 19th and 20th centuries. It is timber framed and has plaster panels, covered by a roof of handmade red clay tiles. The original layout comprised a two-bay hall range facing east, with a two-bay service crosswing to the left and a two-bay parlour/solar crosswing to the right. A 20th-century chimney stack is located in the right bay of the hall range, replacing a larger original in the same position. A further crosswing was added to the left, projecting to the rear, with an internal stack, reportedly built around 1925.

The front elevation presents five similar gables, disguising the medieval plan of the interior, which is built to two storeys. There are five windows across the front, featuring 19th-century (and reproduction) casements with three lights, each divided into eight panes and featuring a four-centred arched head, with a moulded label. Some crown glass is present. A 19th-century door with a four-centred arched head is set within a 19th-century gabled porch, which has a four-centred outer arch and cusped bargeboards with a moulded finial. Cusped bargeboards are on all gables.

A late 16th-century window with seven ovolo mullions and diamond-leaded glass is found in the right return wall, and is blocked internally. The hall has moulded half-height jowls, and moulded transverse and axial beams, with the latter stopped and scarfed where the original stack was removed. Two moulded service doorways, each with a hollow-moulded four-centred arched head (one blocked), are located at the left end of the hall. The service bay originally had an axial division and features horizontally sectioned joists, moulded on the front and plain on the rear. This room is now lined with oak panelling dating to around 1600, painted. An axial beam in the parlour bay is boxed in. On the first floor, close studding is exposed, along with curved bracing trenched into it, and a re-sited doorhead of four-centred curvature. One stud on the rear wall of the solar retains a painted design from around 1600 in black lines on white, a remnant of a scheme that originally covered all internal plaster and timberwork; it is likely that more painted studwork remains concealed under plaster. The roof is a clasped purlin construction.