2, The Square

This is a house and shop dating to the late 16th century and early 19th century, situated in Maldon. The building is constructed of rendered brick and rendered timber framing, with roofs covered in a mix of handmade and machine-made plain tiles. It has a complex plan form.

The front elevation is two storeys with a two-window range. It features a wide, parapeted facade with a taller section offset to one side, connected by concave curves. Behind this is a hipped roof of machine-made tiles, along with an area of flat roof. The first floor has one plain sash window with a moulded surround and a 19th-century three-light casement with fixed square upper lights. A full-width shop front, dating to the 19th century, features a fascia, large glass panes, a canted recessed entrance, and coloured glass above the transom.

The rear elevation showcases a two-storey, rendered building with a plain tile roof parallel to the front. A 19th-century workshop block is attached to the rear, with a lean-to slate roof, boarded gable, a plain sash window, and a tall brick stack. A rendered stack projects through the rear roof slope. A small two-storey rear wing sits on the north-west boundary, featuring a plain tile roof, rendered walls, and a two-light window with a moulded surround on the first floor. The ground floor has a door and a fixed 16-pane window. Adjacent to this wing is a two-storey painted-brick workshop from the 19th century, which was under renovation at the time of the survey. It has a 16-pane sash, a smaller sash with one vertical glazing bar, and an infilled former loft door on the first floor; the ground floor contains a door and an arched window opening. A small, painted-brick, single-storey building has an asbestos gabled roof and a 20th-century conservatory partially covers the elevation of the main outbuilding.

The interior of the main range is a three-bay, two-storey house dating to the late 16th century and exhibiting good timber framing. Features include jowled posts, stop-chamfered bridging joists, cranked external wall bracing, and a roof of the clasped side-purlin type with large curved wind bracing. There are traces of former window openings and a former rear door position, as well as an inserted 17th-century stack with mantel beams. The joists are narrow and deeper than their width, and the spine beam may have originally been carried on a Samson post. A central tie beam over the first-floor chamber has inverted braces. This structure connects to a late 15th-century cross-wing on an adjoining site and likely represents a late 16th-century rebuilding of a former open hall.

A 19th-century range was built at right angles to the original house, and the shop now penetrates into its ground floor.