Wasses Farmhouse

House. Dating from the early to mid-16th century, Wasse’s Farmhouse has been altered in the early 17th and 20th centuries. It is timber framed, with plastered walls and a roof of handmade red clay tiles. The original house comprised a two-bay hall range facing northeast, an incomplete crosswing to the right (the front bay rebuilt in 1982), and an early 17th century two-bay crosswing to the left. An internal stack is located at the junction of the hall range and left crosswing. The hall range is single-storey with an attic; the right crosswing is two storeys high, and the left crosswing is also two storeys with an attic. The windows are mostly 20th-century casements – three on the ground floor and five on the first floor, including two within gabled dormers. A 20th-century door is present.

The hall range features jowled posts, a portion of the central tiebeam and brace, which are not smoke-blackened, and an early 17th-century inserted floor consisting of a chamfered axial beam with lamb's tongue stops, and plain joists of vertical section supported on pegged clamps. The roof has been rebuilt in softwood, with a rear pitch at a shallower angle than the front. The right crosswing originally had two long bays and a short smoke-bay to the rear; the front bay has been demolished and rebuilt in 1982. It exhibits jowled and chamfered posts with step stops, plain joists of horizontal section, a blocked original stair trap, and twin service doorways: one with a hollow-moulded jamb and four-centred arched head, an intact but blocked moulded outer frame, and the other a residual fragment. The roof is a crownpost roof with thin axial bracing, retaining an original wattle and daub partition between the smoke bay and the middle bay, which is heavily smoke-blackened. The left crosswing has jowled and chamfered posts with lamb's tongue stops, and chamfered axial beams with lamb's tongue stops at both floors; the attic is wholly plastered, although the roof appears rebuilt. The two ground floor hearths have been significantly altered.

This house is an unusual example of its type in Essex. The absence of smoke-blackening in the hall range suggests a former timber-framed chimney, of which no trace remains. The placement of the main stack at the ‘high’ end is also unusual. The original smoke bay is one of very few known examples in Essex. These three unusual features, all related to heating, provide insights into experimentation in the 16th and early 17th centuries.