Langley House

Langley House is a Grade II* listed building on Kings Langley High Street comprising a house with adjoining outbuildings. It represents an important survival of multiple periods of development from the later 16th century onwards.

The building forms a T-shaped group. The central part dates from the later 16th century and features timber frame construction brick-cased, with a western crosswing of the same period. A contemporary stable range originally stood to the west, now linked to the centre. The stable range is brick-cased on its western elevation but white weatherboarded to the yard on the eastern side. An early 18th-century brick block was added to the east, with red and grey brick chequer and red brick dressings. A 19th-century rear link block with a new entrance on the north connects this eastern block, and north and south end extensions were added to the western stable range.

The complex is roofed with old red tiles, steeply pitched, with the eastern front block featuring a hipped roof and wooden dentilled eaves cornice. The western stable range stands at one-and-a-half storeys and includes a small white weatherboarded cupola with spike finial. A three-light flat-roofed dormer window sits on the eastern side, above a small leaded casement window positioned over three coach house doors. The stable range timbers are notable: jowled bay posts with straight braces support cambered tie-beams of collar trusses, with clasped purlin roof and straight wind braces.

The central 16th-century part is two storeys. Its southern garden front displays two four-light small-paned casement windows on the first floor and a flush box 6/6 sash window to the ground floor. The north side features a tilehung gable.

Internally, the central part retains important historic fabric. A passage and eastern stair occupy the eastern end of the range. The soffit of the passage beam carries decorative plaster vine-scroll casing, which continues the treatment applied to the crossed beams over the large ground-floor room that extends through the entire range including the western crosswing. This room features scratch-moulded oak panelling and a chamfered four-centred arched brick fireplace with a fine Jacobean arcaded overmantle, fluted Ionic pilasters, and dentilled frieze.

The first-floor room above contains a more elaborate three-centred arched ovolo-moulded brick fireplace set in a moulded brick square surround. Bay posts display quadrant-shaped chamfered jowls with slender straight braces. The structural timbers show wide-spaced wall studs, queen-post trusses to clasped-purlin roof with straight wind braces and face-halved bladed scarf joint to the wallplate. A panelled door retains three cockspur hinges.

The formal eastern front of the 18th-century block is five windows wide, displaying plinth, moulded floorboard, white dentilled eaves cornice, and a moulded brick apron to the first-floor central window. A matching window was inserted in the 19th century where a former central door once stood. Windows are flush box sashes with glazing bars, set beneath segmental gauged red arches.

Interior spaces on the eastern block retain good panelled finishes with cornices and shutters. The smaller southeast room in front features corner fireplaces. A moulded closed-string stair with turned balusters, moulded handrail, and matching dado connects the levels. First-floor rooms retain panelling and simple fire surrounds.

The northern end of the eastern block displays three bays of matching blank recesses with a dummy 18th-century door surround at the centre.

The 19th-century rear link, slightly advanced, comprises three bays of matching height with brick dentilled eaves. Two 6/6 flush box sash windows sit above an early 19th-century half-glazed four-panel door with pilasters and moulded transom, all set beneath a segmental gauged arch topped by an ornate fanlight.