Three Wantz

This is a house dating to the late 16th century, with alterations and additions in the 17th and 20th centuries. It is located in Doddinghurst. The house is primarily timber-framed, but with a brick front wall and a peg-tiled roof. It has a lobby entrance plan with a central stack and front door on the south side. It is built over one and a half storeys, with a 3-window front and one gabled dormer window, all featuring 20th-century casements styled to resemble 18th or 19th-century proportions. The front door is a 20th-century fielded panel design, with one glazed panel, and is set within a matching timber and brick gabled porch with moulded composition pilasters. The main stack is a 20th-century rebuild, retaining some of the original diagonal shafts. A smaller stack is located behind the roof apex. A single-storey extension to the south, added in the 20th century, includes a similar door to the front and a 20th-century window with a top-opening light.

The interior reveals phases of building from the 16th and 17th centuries, although the sequence is not entirely clear. The two northeastern bays are the earliest, featuring stout studding and internal rising braces. The southwestern bay is a later addition with primary bracing. Within the early bays, the main stack is inserted, with a depressed 4-centred arched fireplace in the attic and a rebuilt ground-floor fireplace retaining the original timber lintel. The principal central ground-floor room contains flat-sectioned joists with diminished, haunched soffit tenons. The northern room has an old outer frame, though the ceiling appears to have been renewed with deep-sectioned joists and similar tenons. The added bay to the south also has deep-sectioned joists and diminished, haunched soffit tenons, originally partitioned axially, evidenced by redundant joints and brick footings found by the owner, along with a circular footing at the rear. A smaller stack in this bay is probably contemporary. Carpenters’ marks, scratched into the surface, are visible on the original exterior end wall (now at the back of the principal stack), and on the central cross walling, with distinctive scratched circles. The cross wall also has numerous large peg holes, approximately 31mm in diameter, arranged in rows and pairs, suggesting a setting for a weavers' warping frame. A 20th-century restoration included complete renewal of the front wall in the 1930s. The rear of the house is similarly roughcast, with two 20th-century casement windows and a boarded door. The northeast end of the roof has been repaired with 20th-century machine-made flat tiles. A 20th-century extension on the southwest end creates an L-shaped plan. The timber framing indicates a sequence of reconstruction and addition.