Tollesbury Hall

House. Dating back to the 13th century, Tollesbury Hall has been altered and extended through the 16th, 17th, and 20th centuries. It is timber-framed and plastered with a concrete tile roof. The original hall, formerly aisled, comprises two large bays facing south, with a 16th-century stack to the right of the centre. A two-bay crosswing, built in the 15th century, projects from the right end. A two-bay extension from the 17th century adjoins the left end. A lean-to extension at the rear occupies the site of a former aisle, but is wider than it would have been. Modern additions include a stair tower and a single-storey extension with a hipped roof to the rear of the crosswing. The house is two stories high with attics. The ground floor has two 20th-century sash windows and two casements. The first floor has three early 19th-century sashes (16 lights each), one 20th-century sash, and one casement. The attic has three 19th-century casements set within gabled dormers. A 20th-century glazed door provides access. Three octagonal shafts have been rebuilt in the 20th century. The roof features 20th-century wooden guttering with a V shape supported on wooden brackets. Notable structural features include unjowled posts, double straight square bracing at the ends, dragon ties, straight square braces to the arcade plates, a moulded capital on one arcade post, oblique trenches for former passing-braces, and empty matrices with secret notched lap joints in the straight central tiebeam. A splayed and tabled scarf with undersquinted square butts, edge-key and face-pegs is visible on the rear arcade plate. Empty mortices for double rising braces indicate a former bay or crosswing on the right end, which was replaced in the 15th century by the current crosswing. A late 16th-century floor includes two chamfered transverse beams with chamfered joists, featuring lamb's tongue stops in the left bay and roll stops in the right bay. There are two wood-burning hearths, altered in the 20th century. The roof above the tiebeam level was rebuilt in the 17th century with clasped purlin construction. The crosswing has jowled posts, a cambered central tiebeam with one arched brace, an edge-halved and bridled scarf in the right wallplate, an original central ground-floor partition, and a crownpost roof—complete in the rear bay, but rebuilt at the front. The floor is three bays wide, featuring a chamfered transverse beam with step stops supported by a girt of the hall, and chamfered joists with step stops. The house was originally built as the manor house of Barking Abbey (as documented by P. Morant, 1768). It shares structural similarities with the wheat barn at Cressing Temple, which has been carbon-dated to approximately 1310, suggesting Tollesbury Hall may be even earlier, as it lacks the jowled posts and tying joints found at Cressing Temple.