Inglenook

Inglenook is a small hall house dating from the 16th century, with alterations from the 17th and 19th centuries, and a 20th-century extension. The house is timber-framed, with plaster walls and a thatched roof. It originally comprised a two-bay hall aligned roughly northeast-southwest, with an integral service wing at the southwest and a storeyed parlour/solar wing at the northeast. An axial chimney stack was inserted in the southwest bay of the hall around 1600. A 20th-century extension was added to the northwest, featuring yellow brick walls and a roof of handmade red clay tiles. The single-storey extension has attic space. The southeast elevation has weatherboarded panelling at the base, with plastered walls above, decorated with simple geometrical designs in panels. There is a boarded door within a tiled lean-to porch, along with four 20th-century casement windows. A 20th-century casement window is found in a gabled dormer on the northeast bay of the hall, with the date 1607 faintly inscribed in the plaster of the gable. A flat-roofed dormer is present on the extension. The roof is half-hipped at the southwest end. Internally, some of the timber framing is exposed, displaying jowled posts, heavy studding, and arched braces from corner posts to tiebeams and wallplates within the studs. The central truss of the hall features arch-braced collar construction. The roof is a clasped purlin construction with curved wind bracing. Rafters, collars, braces, and the original thatch laths above the hall are all smoke-blackened. The original floor remains in the northeast bay, consisting of unchamfered joists arranged longitudinally. Other floors are later additions. A blocked, unglazed window is found in the northwest wall of the parlour. Two northeast tiebeams have been cut to accommodate inserted doorways. The southeast wallplate has a bladed scarf and a rebate for the shutters of the hall window. The brickwork of the inserted hearth is approximately 33 cm thick and has been repaired at the back. The inscription of 1607 on the dormer is plausible, as Walker maps in the Essex Record Office show dormers appearing in vernacular houses between 1600 and 1615.