Dairy House, Dairy Cottage And Attached Stables

Dairy House, Dairy Cottage, and the attached stables are a farmhouse that has been converted into two dwellings, built around 1777. The structure is made of Flemish bond red brick and features a double-gabled roof with old plain tiles on the front and slates on the rear, along with brick ridge and end stacks. It has a double-depth plan and stands two storeys tall with a cellar, comprising an eight-window range.

There are steps leading down to the cellar, which has a wrought-iron handrail. The mid-20th century gabled timber porch has a cambered gauged brick arch over a 19th-century plank door set in a beaded architrave for Dairy House on the right. On the left, Dairy Cottage features a timber lintel over a 19th-century plank door with an overlight, also set in a beaded architrave. Both dwellings have cambered gauged brick arches over 12-pane sash windows, with dentilled brick eaves above similar first-floor sashes. The rear includes similar sashes, 19th-century casements, and a plank door.

Inside Dairy House, there are mid-18th century panelled shutters and doors, mid-18th century fireplaces, and an open-well staircase with stick balusters at the rear. The room to the left has a corner cupboard flanked by pilasters, and a plank door leads to the kitchen on the right, which features a moulded mantle shelf over a blocked fireplace, a copper, a bread oven, and mid-18th century shelving on carved brackets. The interior of Dairy Cottage has not been inspected.

The stables to the left are constructed of Flemish bond brick with a roof made of old plain tiles, corrugated iron, and Roman tiles. They have a double-depth plan and are one storey with a loft, featuring a four-window range. There are gauged brick cambered arches over two 20th-century stable doors, with gauged brick lunettes that are blocked and have a mid-20th century inserted window to the left. Plank doors are set in raking half-dormers, and there is a raised eaves course. The bay to the left has weather-board over a timber frame, and the interior contains chamfered beams.

Historically, this building, along with the dairy, brewhouse, and cowhouse, was constructed around 1777 for the Rigby family of Mistley Hall. They are depicted as part of a complex titled "Farmhouse, Offices and Co" in the area of the estate known as the Park on Bernard Scale's 1778 map, which is now held in the Essex Records office.