Electricity Showrooms

The Electricity Showrooms, located on the east side of High Street in Great Dunmow, is a shop and office building that was originally a house, dating from the 16th century and later. It is constructed with timber framing and plaster, featuring two storeys with attics. The building has a low-pitched slate gabled roof from the early 19th century, which has a raised ridge line towards the southern end.

The front facade includes six 19th-century double-hung sash windows without glazing bars on the first floor, positioned above a carriage arch, a small 19th-century shop window, and a wide 20th-century shopfront. There is a very large red brick chimney stack at the north end, which has four angled shafts and was rebuilt in the 19th century to match the original design. At the northern end, there is a gabled block with a peg-tiled roof from the 17th century.

Inside, the building reveals two floored bays and a crosswing from the mid-16th century, with additional bays from the 18th or 19th centuries at both ends. The northern bay forms the carriage arch. The original roof structure, which is intact beneath the later early 19th-century slate covering, features two crown post bays with only the collar purlin and braces visible, which are soot blackened. There are lime-washed, covered 17th-century wall paintings in the roof space. An early 16th-century stack rises through the building, showcasing an exposed flat-arched opening with a cant-sided interior, two orders of chamfering, and very low stops that were part of the former hall. The upper floor contains early 18th-century doors and cupboards, as well as two unusual stubby spiral timber columns that support the roof over a later stair tower on the first floor. The building likely began as an open hall around 1500, with a slightly later brick stack, which was rebuilt to create two storeys in the late 16th century, incorporating earlier fragments.