Browne'S Charity Almshouses And Chapel

Browne's Charity Almshouses and Chapel, located in Brentwood, were built in 1858 by S Teulon. This group of almshouses is made of red brick with stone dressings around the windows and doors, topped with a peg-tiled roof. The structure consists of ten cottage units arranged in a row, with a central chapel positioned at right angles. The group steps down along Wigley Bush Lane, with the cottages on the north and south ends having gable ends that project forward, creating prominent belvederes adorned with ornamental figures in Gothic niches.

The design combines classical composition with Gothic details. A free-standing well head is located to the south of the chapel, positioned at the break in the forward line of the buildings. Each cottage is single-storey, featuring one large room and one smaller room, with three-light and two-light casement windows. The windows are detailed with mullions and transoms, and the front doors are boarded with ironwork, set within arched doorheads surrounded by rectangular frames. The steep roof has eaves that extend forward on brackets, creating a pentice, and there is a stack at each gable end.

The chapel has a west gable end with buttressed angles, a three-light window in a two-centred arch with geometrical tracery, and head stops to the labels with a lifted string course below. The design includes decorative elements such as crosses and lozenges made from burnt headers. The octagonal well head features pierced trefoiled lights and contains a pump with a date, along with a frieze displaying a text from Proverbs beneath its pointed roof.

Inside, the typical cottage has a narrow larder aligned with the front door and a larger principal room that includes an inscription on the fireplace lintel. The bedroom is undecorated. At the rear, there is a kitchen out-shut that projects into the house yard, and a free-standing WC is situated away from the back door in the yard. Some of the original arrangements at the back of the houses have been obscured due to 20th-century rebuilding and additions that have filled some of the yards.