Dodds Farmhouse

Dodds Farmhouse, Church Road, Kelvedon Hatch

A timber-framed house of complex development spanning from around 1500 to the 20th century. The building is rendered and colour-washed with a peg-tile roof featuring a small hip to the east. It has a rectangular plan with a projection at the east end of the south side and rear outshuts.

The exterior is two storeys with a five-window range on the north elevation. The windows are mainly 20th-century restored wooden casements with old iron frames, reglazed and leaded with small rectangular panes. The north elevation has ground-floor windows of three 3-light, one fixed light and one 3-light; the first floor contains one 3-light, one 2-light, one 3-light, one 2-light and one 3-light window. East and west gable-end chimneys are of 17th-century red brick in essentially English bond but irregular form. The east stack has two octagonal shafts with moulded bases and ovolo-moulded caps. The west stack is plain except for a recessed arched panel on its west face at gable height. The rear elevation is complex, with a large principal stack in the centre of the south wall containing three octagonal shafts matching those on the east gable. A double gabled projection rises to the east of the stack. Two 20th-century wooden casement windows (one 3-light, one 2-light) sit to the west of the stack. A 20th-century brick lean-to and outshuts occupy the ground floor, incorporating a central four-unit aluminium-framed conservatory. To the west is a large two-paned casement window and 20th-century glazed door; to the east of the stack a gabled projection contains a 4-light casement window with lean-to and glazed aluminium-framed door. Outshut roofs mix 20th-century flat machine-made tiles and peg tiles. The front door, now on the east end wall, is 20th-century with six fielded panels, fixed side lights and a deep 20th-century gabled hood with peg-tile roof.

The interior reveals three cells, mainly dating from around 1600, though the west end unit is an earlier high-end cross-wing from around 1500, which was once jettied to the north. Principal joists and wall posts feature step-stopped chamfers. Displayed arched bracing on the outer east face marks a former hall. An apparent shutter groove, now plastered over, exists in the north tie-beam of the front window of the upper chamber. The central and east cells date from around 1600 and rest on earlier work, with binding and bridging joists displaying lamb's-tongue chamfer stops. The east room has deep sectioned joists with diminished haunches and pendant soffits. A contemporary lateral stack to the rear of the central room has a ground-floor fireplace (rebuilt) and a first-floor fireplace with a four-centred arch and ovolo-moulding. A possible further fireplace exists in the attic, now covered. The east stack is of the same form, with a restored ground-floor fireplace and a first-floor fireplace with four-centred arch and ovolo-moulding. The west-end stack was inserted into the earlier outer wall of the cross-wing, cutting through a storey post; the ground-floor fireplace is now plain, while the first-floor fireplace has a four-centred arch and ovolo-moulding. The first floor contains two 17th-century door frames jointed and pegged in the partition between the centre and east rooms, and two further contemporary door frames providing access across the east area of the house.

The timber-frame projection to the south of the east end, now covered by twin gables, appears early and original. Moulded wall plates survive with hollow chamfer, return and plain chamfer, suggesting it was intended as a cross-wing, probably projecting only at the rear, and later remodelled in the 17th century with new tie-beams, studding and double gables.

The roof contains a central area of sooted rafter couples showing compression marks and differential sooting where a collar purlin of a crown-post roof originally ran. Both ends transition to unsooted 17th-century butt-purlin construction: the west end replaces the earlier cross-wing roof and the east end replaces another early roof set at right angles projecting to the south. The sooted rafters over the original hall bear carpenters' marks, and two central trusses contain rafter joints for a second lower collar, possibly for a louvre frame. The later rebuild's west end features a terminal truss with exterior weathering positioned about 1.25 metres from the present end, containing framing for an ovolo-moulded window (mullions now lost). The probability of an attic fireplace plus a gable-end window suggests that for a period the house had a heated and lit attic that later fell out of use. Later reconstruction of the gable end is indicated by rudimentary framing visible around the first-floor fireplace immediately below. Rows of peg holes in the east wall of the west ground-floor room were probably used for a warping frame employed in weaving.