Mill House is a Grade II listed building in the Braintree local planning authority area, England. First listed on 29 August 1984. House.
Mill House
- WRENN ID
- worn-entrance-weasel
- Grade
- II
- Local Planning Authority
- Braintree
- Constituency
- Braintree MP: Sir James Cleverly (Con)
- Country
- England
- Date first listed
- 29 August 1984
- Type
- House
- Address
- Mill House, Gainsford End, Toppesfield
- OS grid reference
- TL 724 351
- Coordinates
- 51.98784, 0.51075
- Source
- Historic England listing
Description
Mill House is a house dating from around 1600, with alterations made in the 18th and 20th centuries. It is timber framed and plastered, with a roof made of handmade red clay tiles. The house has four bays that are aligned approximately north to south, featuring an axial chimney stack located in the second bay from the south end. This chimney originally formed a lobby entrance to the east, which is now blocked. There is a one-bay extension to the north, built in the 18th century, which has an external chimney stack on the gable. Additionally, there is a single-storey extension at the rear of the main stack and a rear porch in the southeast angle, both added in the 20th century. The house has two storeys and attics.
On the west elevation, there is a glazed door at the front of a tiled gabled porch, with two casement windows on the ground floor and four on the first floor, all from the 20th century. Inside, the house features jowled posts, some exposed close studding, and plain-chamfered axial beams in the first and third bays from the south end, with lamb's tongue stops present only in the third bay. Both of these bays also have plain-chamfered joists of horizontal section with lamb's tongue stops. In the original northern bay, there are plain joists of horizontal section arranged longitudinally. The interior includes two large wood-burning hearths. On the first floor at the original northern end, there is curved tension bracing trenched inside the studs. Inserted ceilings above the first floor date to the early 17th century. In the attic, the floorboards are of the same date, and there is an unglazed window in each gable.
Local climate
Mill House 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
- No sale records on file
- No related consent applications matched
- 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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