Little Lampetts

Little Lampetts is a house dating from the 17th century, with extensions added in the 18th and 19th centuries. It is timber-framed and clad with weatherboarding, with a roof of handmade red clay tiles. The original three-bay section faces north and features a central stack. It was extended by one bay at each end in the 18th century. The house has two storeys, with an original lean-to stair annexe at the rear and a 19th-century lean-to extending from that. A 20th-century conservatory is located to the left of the stair annexe. Single-storey lean-tos were added in the 19th century at each end; the left one has red clay pantiles and the right one has handmade red clay tiles. The front elevation has a four-window range of 20th-century casement windows and a 20th-century door. The roof is half-hipped at each end.

The interior timber frame includes elm and reused oak. Features include unjowled posts and primary straight bracing. Each bay contains a chamfered axial beam, with plain joists of vertical section, except for the bay to the left of the stack. This bay has a reused axial beam with empty mortices for studs, and reused horizontal joists, chamfered with lamb's tongue stops, alongside some plain square joists. The axial beam in the left bay is also reused, displaying step stops. A studded partition between two ground-floor rooms on the right side of the stack has been largely removed, with two sharply curved timbers introduced since 1960. The right hearth has been re-bricked and contains a cast-iron fireback dated 1622; the left hearth is blocked. Original boarded and ledged pine and oak doors are present. Two large original apertures for glazed windows are blocked in the rear wall of the first floor. The upper right room has original wallplates and an end tie-beam approximately one meter above floor level. Unusual face-halved scarf joints are visible on the wallplates of the original house. The roof incorporates smoke-blackened rafters from a medieval hall. The house was originally built as one dwelling, later divided into two similar cottages with a shared stack, and is now again a single house. Photographs held by the owner show that the current windows were installed prior to 1960. The house is depicted on an estate map of 1832, and alterations were occurring to the left-hand lean-to at the time of inspection in February 1989, as documented in Essex Record Offices: D/DQ 50/6.