383, Old Road

This is a house, dating to approximately 1679, with a façade from around 1840 and subsequent alterations. The house has a timber-frame structure with a painted brick façade and weatherboarded returns. It is roofed with grey slate, and has red brick chimney stacks at each end. Prominent pilasters flank the front. The two-storey, three-window front features small-paned vertically sliding sash windows. A central doorway is topped by moulded capitals and bases to the pilasters, a frieze, and a flat canopy. To the left is a 19th-century single-storey extension, which was formerly used as a trap shed with a stable and workshop projecting forward. This extension contains vertically boarded doors and a large window with nine mullions containing overlapping small panes of glass. A timber ridge louvre is topped with a finial. On the north face, a carved greyhound, taken from the prow of the ship Greyhound which sank off Clacton in 1884, has been inset. The property’s former occupants were involved in smuggling, and a raid by Customs and Excise officers around 1832 is documented. Details relating to the house have appeared in local newspapers and Essex Countryside magazine.