Willoughby's Farmhouse is a Grade II listed building in the Braintree local planning authority area, England. First listed on 25 October 1971. Farmhouse. 3 related planning applications.
Willoughby's Farmhouse
- WRENN ID
- late-eave-aspen
- Grade
- II
- Local Planning Authority
- Braintree
- Constituency
- Braintree MP: Sir James Cleverly (Con)
- Country
- England
- Date first listed
- 25 October 1971
- Type
- Farmhouse
- Address
- Willoughby's Farmhouse, Willoughby's Lane, CM7 5PH
- OS grid reference
- TL 777 260
- Coordinates
- 51.90423, 0.58185
- Source
- Historic England listing
Description
Willoughby's Farmhouse is a farmhouse dating from the 15th century, with a remodelled front range built in the late 17th century. The building features roughcast over a timber frame and has a gabled old tile roof. There are two brick lateral stacks at the rear and a 17th-century brick ridge stack on the rear wing, which has three octagonal flues set on a stack with a moulded cornice. The front of the rear wing includes part of a 15th-century open hall, which was extended in the early 17th century to form an L-plan with a rear left wing. The late 19th-century four-light casements with glazing bars are topped with flat rendered arches. The two-storey rear wing has a 20th-century porch and an early 19th-century brick porch, along with late 19th-century casements with glazing bars and an early 19th-century brick and tile outshut at the rear. A 17th-century stair turret is located at the rear of the main range.
Inside, the front range features a mid-19th-century stair hall with a stick-baluster staircase. To the left, there is an olovo-moulded beam with carved fern-leaf stops, and to the right, a cased beam with an early to mid-19th-century fireplace. The first floor has a cased beam to the right and an olovo-moulded beam to the left, along with a five-bay collar-truss roof that includes straight windbraces and cyma mouldings on the jowled storey posts. The roofspace contains a 17th-century granary with a boarded partition over the stair turret, which is a rare survival. The front room of the rear wing on the first floor has jowled storey posts and a 15th-century collar-purlin roof from the former open hall, as well as a 17th-century chamfered segmental-arched fireplace. A 17th-century ribbed door leads to the rear room, which has an old straight-flight staircase next to the fireplace. The ground-floor front room features half of a 15th-century semi-circular arched doorhead, a 17th-century brick open fireplace, a 17th-century inserted floor with exposed boards and joists, and a 17th-century three-light diamond-mullioned oak window. The room at the rear includes a 17th-century chamfered beam.
Local climate
Willoughby's Farmhouse sits in one of the driest parts of the UK, with an average of 680 mm of rain a year. This makes it drier than 99% of listed buildings in the UK. Its exposure to wind-driven rain is lower than that of 75% of listed buildings.
It experiences an average of 28 freeze-thaw cycles a year, fewer than 70% of listed buildings. Of these, 13 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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- Full EPC report — heating system, energy costs, size, glazing, construction etc.
- No sale records on file
- Related listed building consents — 3 applications
- 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
Matched applications, energy data and sale records are assembled automatically and may contain errors. Flag incorrect data.
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