The Bell Inn

The Bell Inn is a public house on the High Street in Ingatestone, with origins spanning from the early 15th century through to the 19th century. It is timber-framed, plastered and weatherboarded, with a peg-tiled and 20th-century clay-tiled roof. The building follows a T-plan, with a principal range running parallel to the street and a rear central wing set at right angles.

The exterior is two storeys throughout. The north front elevation features a continuous jetty with an angle-post and brace supporting a dragon-beam at the east end; this end jetty is now masked by a 20th-century extension. A 17th-century principal stack of four plain, separately-set diagonally-arranged shafts sits off-centre towards the east end, with some evidence of later rebuilding. A second stack pierces the front roof pitch at the west end.

The ground floor has a 20th-century doorway positioned in front of the principal stack, featuring a simple bracketed flat hood, moulded doorcase, and narrow side and top lights. The door is boarded in its lower portion with upper glazing in a 2x3 pane glazing-bar pattern. Three 19th-century three-light bay windows with sashes occupy the ground floor, featuring glazing bars of 5x4, 3x4 and 4x4 panes respectively; the side cants have 2x4 pane glazing. The west bay window is flanked by jetty brackets, one of which is carefully chamfered. Small 20th-century single-storey units have been added at both east and west ends; the east end has a top-hung casement window with 3x3 pane glazing bars.

The first floor carries four similar early 19th-century sash windows with moulded architraves and 4x4 pane glazing bars. The bressumer has a double ovolo-moulded facia board, partly dating to the early 17th century. A deep plain save board partially obscures the first-floor window heads.

The rear south elevation shows a central gable-ended projection from the south wing, with a further small ground-floor projection also gable-ended. To the east of the principal block, the ground floor is weatherboarded with a rear doorway—a simple version of the front door with side lights to the east side only. Adjacent to this is a 2-light casement window with 2x2 pane glazing bars. To the west, a small 20th-century flat-roofed ground-floor unit stands. The first floor has 20th-century 2-light casement windows with 2x2 pane glazing bars. A 19th-century ground-floor projection extends east from the wing and encloses a small yard. The rear of the principal range at ground floor is weatherboarded with a 20th-century glazed door featuring 2x4 pane glazing bars. The first floor here is plastered and contains an early 19th-century sliding sash window (now simplified) with 4x3 pane glazing bars, plus a 20th-century casement window with 2x3 pane glazing bars. At the east end, a 20th-century ground-floor section masks the original jetty and has two simple metal-framed casement windows. The rear wing's east face fronts onto the yard and retains an early 18th-century triple shouldered stack with some burnt headers. Adjacent stands a broad 18th-century 2-panelled door, with a 20th-century lean-to tiled porch in the internal angle between the principal range and wing. East of the rear wing, two conjured ground-floor projections survive; one tiled with a gable end has a 20th-century double casement window off-centre with 4x3 pane glazing bars. The adjacent projection has a single-pitch slate roof with 19th-century 2x2 paned casement windows in its east end.

The west end elevation shows the plain end of the principal block jetted to street, with a small 20th-century ground-floor addition to the west containing three simple casement windows. To the south, the south wing's west side elevation has weatherboarded ground floor, partly over a 19th-century brick dwarf wall. A simple 19th-century bead-moulded doorway with a plain 20th-century door opens here. Flanking this are 20th-century casement windows: the north has three lights with 3x3 pane glazing bars, the south two lights with 4x3 pane glazing bars. The first floor contains one 19th-century and one 20th-century 3-light casement window, both with 6x3 pane glazing bars. To the south, a lesser building with garage has 20th-century bonded double doors.

The interior reveals three phases of timber-framed construction that together create the present form:

The earliest unit dates to the early 15th century and is centrally positioned. It originally featured a jettied gable end to the street with a blocked doorway having an elegant hollow-chamfered 4-centred arched head. Evidence of an adjacent original window survives through a sill mortice and shutter groove. The north-south axis of this central unit is shown by the orientation of its jawl posts and a transverse tie-beam, with a transverse ground-floor binding joint containing partition mortices. A plain exterior jetty bracket on the street frontage survives from this phase. The framing is plain except for a step-stopped chamfer on the west side middle rail.

A late 15th-century addition to the west side features richly moulded ground-floor ceiling joists. The crossed binding and bridging joists, as well as common joists, are decorated with chamfers comprising cymas, rolls and hollow mouldings. The moulding at the ends of the binding joist elegantly converges and runs out. A contemporary ground-floor brick fireplace, off-centre to the north at the west end, remains with a defaced timber lintel and remnants of roll and hollow moulding. High above, seven trefoiled corbelled arches in narrow brick rest on the fireplace; the rest of the fireplace was rebuilt in 19th-century brickwork, with an underbuilt lintel incorporating a reduced segment-headed fireplace and niche. The roof of this unit is not visible, but a central vertical post above the tie-beam implies a crown-post form. A chamfered jetty bracket on the street frontage supports the projecting binding joist, which has a refined shaped soffit. A shutter groove from an original ground-floor window remains.

An early 17th-century addition to the east side of the original unit features a dragon-beam carrying quite deep-sectioned joists around the north side and east end. The framing plan includes slightly carved internally-nailed tension braces. A contemporary large 4-fluied stack sits at the junction of the central and east end units. The original ground-floor fireplace to the east has a shallow segment-arched head with ovolo-moulding to both arch and rectangular surround, plus a timber bearer over the arch. A fragment of decorated plaster remains, showing reed-moulded square panels within outer linked squares and a central moulded device; plain ceiling joists probably originally supported a similar plastered ceiling. The fireplace on the reverse west side has two chamfered orders around a flattened triangular head; the stack bridges an older partition in the early central unit. First-floor fireplaces are now blocked. A rear first-floor passageway runs along the length of the block, with two contemporary doorways surviving—one featuring a lamb's tongue chamfer strip. A first-floor closet exists in the void between the principal stack and front wall of this phase, retaining an original door frame on the east side. The rear wing to the south, also of early 17th-century date, comprises two bays with a blocked ground-floor 3-light ovolo-mullioned window and an axial bridging joist with lamb's tongue chamfer strips. Central partition studs above the beam carry Roman numeral carpenters' marks 1 through 8, with primary bracing below the tie-beam. Edge-halved and bridle scarfs appear in both wall plates over central posts.

Nineteenth-century work includes additions in the rear court and the replacement of earlier windows by the centred sash windows on the front ground floor. The building was historically said to have projected at the west end as well as the east end, though this was never a medieval jetty, as the 15th-century stack occupies that space.