Halfway House

Halfway House is a late 17th-century house located in Little Hadham, set back from the road and facing east. It is a double-fronted, two-storey building with attics, constructed with a timber frame and plastered exterior. The house features a steep old red tile gabled roof that extends as a catslide at the rear, where there is a contemporary shallow weatherboarded outshot containing a bakehouse, kitchen, and dairy, with a cellar beneath the kitchen. The external gable chimneys are made of red brick in English bond, with projecting chimneys for the bakehouse and kitchen at the rear. The layout consists of two rooms with a wide central passage that includes a staircase and access to the rear.

The symmetrical front of the house has flush box sash windows with moulded architraves and 6/6 panes, which have been renewed. There is a six-panel moulded door, with the top two panels glazed, and a trellis work gabled porch. To the west of the chimney at the south end, there are early 19th-century French doors with a reeded surround, corner blocks, paired brackets for the flat hood, and panelled internal shutters. In the north end, next to the east corner, there is a window with early 18th-century heavy ovolo-moulded glazing bars. The attics are lit by gable casement windows.

The structure consists of three bays with heavy jowled posts, stop-chamfered axial beams over the ground floor rooms, cross beams over the first floor rooms, and a butt purlin roof. A vertically moulded plank door with old iron strap hinges survives in the attic, along with two-panel doors with HL hinges on the ground and first floors.

This house was the residence of Captain William Harvey, who died in 1807 and sailed with Captain James Cook on all three circumnavigations; he is buried near the porch of Little Hadham Church. The house, which has seen little change, illustrates a stage in the development of the double pile house and forms a group with the old forge located to its north.