Bois Hall

Bois Hall is a house dating to the late 17th and early 18th centuries, located in Navestock. It is constructed of red brick in a Flemish bond pattern, with traces of tuckpointing, and has a peg-tiled roof. The exterior features flat, gauged brick arches over windows, a moulded cornice, plinth, and string course. The house is two stories high, with attics hidden behind a parapet. It has a 1:3:1 window arrangement, with flush sash windows containing 12 panes of glazing bars. A central range is distinguished by a three-light first-floor window above a Tuscan pillared porch with a dentilled cornice. The front door has six panels, the upper four sunk, and the lower two flush. Screen walls with shaped coping project on either side, with a wall to the left curving down to a simple gateway with square piers, now featuring a 20th-century iron gate. The ends of the screen walls terminate in small red brick outbuildings with hipped tiled roofs and dentilled eaves cornices, currently used as garages. Originally L-shaped, the rear southeastern range has been shortened, and the back of the house rebuilt in 1953, exposing a double-gabled roof and leaving two pilasters at the truncation point. The northeastern elevation is similar to the front facade, but a straight brick joint at the north corner suggests two building phases, replacing an earlier structure. Some windows on the northeast side have been replaced with horned sashes and a 20th-century casement. The southwestern angle shows the join between the two wings, with a large stack projecting externally from the rear of the front block. The interior has undergone significant alteration, though one bedroom retains 18th-century pine fielded panelling with a dentilled cornice. The attic stair features a barley-sugar balustrade and a moulded handrail dating to circa 1700. Rainwater heads bearing the arms and crests of Greene and the date 1687 were formerly on the north front, but were removed and replaced with plain ones during extensive restoration in 1974-79. A painting from 1636 in the Essex Record Office depicts the house as a double-cranked building with Dutch gabled attics and mullioned and transomed windows. An old ruined garden wall remains to the southeast of the house, but its relation to the painting is unclear. Numerous 20th-century steel rods at roof level suggest a rebuild incorporating elements of an earlier structure.