Stondon Massey House

Stondon Massey House

A rectory, now a house, built around 1800 with twentieth-century alterations, located on the west side of Ongar Road. It was built for John Oldham, who was Rector from 1791 to 1841.

The building is constructed of red brick in Flemish bond with a slate roof. It has a square plan with low-pitched gables on each face, deep eaves, and exposed purlins. The design demonstrates Palladian symmetry retained both externally and internally to an unusual degree.

The main house is two storeys with attic rooms. The east front has three bays. The attic gable contains a bull's-eye window with a plain string course across the gable base that creates the impression of a large pediment, and a central stack with three flues. The ground floor has two tripartite segment-headed sash windows with glazing bars, the centre lights being 3 by 4 panes and side lights 1 by 4 panes. Each window has a wooden tympanum with a roundel and gauged brick voussoirs. The central door is also tripartite with a wooden tympanum and voussoirs similar to the windows. It has a reeded door frame, four panels, and a three-paned rectangular fan-light, with side panels decorated with garlands that appear to have been inserted, probably replacing original side lights. The first floor has three sash windows with glazing bars and flat heads with gauged brick voussoirs, each 4 by 4 panes.

The south or garden front is identical to the east front except that the doorway has glazed side lights. The west or rear elevation is similar to the east, with a gable containing a bull's-eye attic window, but the ground floor has three windows with flat heads and gauged brick voussoirs, sashes with glazing bars of 3 by 4 panes. The first floor has two similar windows positioned between the lower windows. A wide stack with nine flues is present. The north elevation is irregular because a single-storey servants' block is attached to it.

At the west end of the ground floor, there is a tripartite doorway as on the east and south sides, with glazed side lights. The door has glazing in the upper panels with the lower panels flush. The first floor has three windows with flat heads, gauged brick voussoirs, and sashes with glazing bars: two are 3 by 2 panes and one is 4 by 4 panes. The servants' building is single-storey with a hipped slate roof. Its west front has a central door with windows on either side, all segment-headed. The south window is a tripartite sash with glazing bars of 3 by 4 panes with side lights of 1 by 4 panes. The north window was divided in the twentieth century into two casements. The north elevation has one segment-headed tripartite window with sashes having glazing bars of 1 by 4, 3 by 4, and 1 by 4 panes, and also a twentieth-century casement in a narrow original window. A stack and garden wall stand to the rear.

The interior of the main house contains an entry corridor with two groin-vaulted sections and an inner door with twentieth-century glazing and a semicircular fan-light. A corridor to the south front door is now blocked by an alteration to the south-east room which provides an apsed end. The staircase is of nineteenth-century type but appears to be a twentieth-century renewal, set in a stair well with a glazed domed top light that borrows light through a large roof skylight. The attic rooms and top corridor are lit by the bull's-eye windows visible on all exterior faces. An entry door to the top flight of the stair and skylight is accessed from back stairs in the north-east angle.