Blakesware Manor

Blakesware Manor is a country house, now divided into five separate residences. It was built between 1876 and 1879 by George Devey for Mrs Hadsley Gosselin. A Roman Catholic chapel in a matching style was completed in 1896 for Sir Martin Gosselin. Following a fire in 1937, the house was reduced and altered by Paul Phipps. A range linking the chapel to the house was rebuilt in 1968 as a monastic building, and the house was subdivided with porches added in the 1980s, designed in an early Renaissance style.

The house is constructed of red brick with decorative blue diaper work and stone dressings, and has steep red tile roofs. It is a tall, three-and-four-storey building in a scholarly neo-Tudor style, now forming an L-shape with a courtyard at the angle. The garden front (east side) features mullioned and transomed bay windows, Tudor arched doorways, and a central tower with an open lantern. The chapel has a steep tiled roof and a panelled east end.

The 1876-79 house replaced a brick house built in 1664 for Sir Thomas Leventhorpe of Sawbridgeworth, which Charles Lamb described under the name of Blakesmoor; this earlier house was demolished in 1822.