Kingshead

The Kingshead is a public house, now a house, dating from the early 19th century. It features a combination of timber framing and weatherboarding, along with sections of red brick laid in Flemish bond, and is topped with a roof of handmade red clay tiles. The building has a complex layout that includes: (1) an 18th-century timber-framed house facing southwest, with a central stack, consisting of one storey with attics; (2) an early 19th-century brick wing at the rear of the left end, which shows a straight joint indicating it was extended before the mid-19th century, featuring an external stack to the right, a cellar, a high main floor, and attics; (3) a two-storey range in the rear right angle, with a brick ground floor and a timber-framed and weatherboarded first floor, aligned with the first block and having an axial stack; and (4) a 20th-century conservatory and lean-to extension to the right.

On the southwest elevation, there are two 20th-century casements on the ground floor, one fixed light at half-floor level, and two 20th-century casements in gabled dormers. It also has two plain boarded doors. The northwest elevation features three cellar openings, one early 19th-century sash window with 12 + 12 lights, another with 6 + 6 lights, and a 20th-century sash on the main floor, along with two flat-roofed dormers—one with a 19th-century horizontal sash of 8 lights and the other a 20th-century casement. There is a plain boarded door at the top of four cement-rendered steps. The building has a gambrel roof and three small brick buttresses. An original square wooden downpipe is present on the southwest elevation, although the wooden guttering is missing.

Block (2) retains an original stair to the attic, featuring a turned newel, stick balusters, and a moulded handrail. The Kingshead Inn is mentioned in the tithe award of 1840, which also notes a lime shed, lime kiln, and coalyard, with ownership attributed to the Hope Insurance Company and occupancy by Jacob Manning, as recorded in the Essex Record Office. The building was first noted in a poor rate assessment in 1811. A photograph taken around 1920 is included in E.A. Wood's "A History of Thorpe-le-Soken to the year 1890," published in 1975.