Bacons Farmhouse

Bacons Farmhouse, Mountnessing

A house dating from the early 17th century with significant early 19th-century alterations. The building combines timber-framing with red brick in Flemish bond, roofed with handmade red clay tiles. The structure comprises an early 17th-century timber-framed range of three bays aligned approximately northeast to southwest, formerly connected to another building at the northeast end (possibly a medieval hall range), now missing. This has been incorporated into an early 19th-century brick building of square plan facing southeast.

The building has two storeys and an attic, with internal stacks in the middle bay of the 17th-century range (to the rear of the axis) and another to the right. There is a partly external stack to the rear right with a rebuilt shaft, and another at the rear left which is corbelled out from the wall to serve the first floor only, now truncated at eaves level. A single-storey wing to the rear centre, turning left to form an L-plan, dates from the 19th century but has been much altered in the 20th century.

The front elevation displays a three-window range of early 19th-century sashes with 8+8 lights, plastered flat arches with projecting keys, and some crown glass. The centrepiece is an off-centre half-glazed double door set within a Tuscan portico with wooden columns and a concrete threshold. The right elevation has three early 19th-century sashes of 6+6 lights in each storey with similar arches. The left elevation also has three early 19th-century sashes of 6+6 horizontal lights in each storey with segmental brick arches, a plain boarded door with a simple flat canopy on profiled brackets, and a 20th-century casement in a flat-roofed dormer. The roof is hipped, forming one range parallel with the front elevation and three individually hipped ranges at the rear. The rear range uses 19th-century handmade bricks externally and partly Flettons internally, roofed with machine-made red clay tiles.

Interior

The timber-framed core is wholly incorporated within the later building, with little visibility below roof level. The entrance hall contains a chamfered axial beam with lamb's tongue stops at the right end; the left end is severed for a 19th-century stair. A similar axial beam runs to the left. The roof is of butt-purlin form with two purlins to each pitch and rafters of vertical section tenoned to the lower purlins, passing over the upper purlins, with a later ridge-piece. The frame is entirely of high-quality oak, and the original roof is complete except at the left end where the former gable has been altered to a hip. At the front, early 19th-century rafters carry the roof out at a lower pitch to meet the brick elevation. At the right end, one mortice in each principal rafter indicates that two purlins formerly connected to another building, now missing.

The interior retains many early 19th-century features. The front doorway and all ground-floor windows at the front and right side have folding internal shutters in square reveals with reeded surrounds. To the left of the entrance hall is a semi-elliptical arch, with another behind it. A doorway with a semicircular head has been made in the original rear wall of the timber-framed range. Most ground-floor doors are of six moulded panels, as are two on the first floor; one to the rear right of the entrance hall has a reeded doorcase with carved rosettes, and another to its left has a similar doorcase, though altered. Early 19th-century moulded skirtings are present throughout. Later fireplaces have been installed.

The building stands within the moat of a moated site.

Historical Context

Bacon's was a manor at least from the time of Edmund and John Bacunne, who obtained a licence from Edward I to enclose a wood to form a park. By 1375 it comprised 100 acres of arable land, 12 acres of pasture, and 4 acres of meadow. Sir William Petre purchased the estate after 1514, and it has remained in the Petre family to the present day.