The Chequers With Wall And Outhouses Fronting Chequer Lane

The Chequers is a house, formerly a public house, dating to the 17th century or earlier, with a rear wing added in the early 18th century. It is located on Hitchin Road, Preston, fronting onto Chequer Lane, and incorporates a boundary wall and outhouses. The building was recorded as "The Chequers" in 1788 and was the location for the manor courts of Temple Dinsley; it closed as a public house in 1959 and was renovated and extended in the 1960s.

The front range is timber-framed and faced with red brick, with infill panels to the exposed east gable end. Elsewhere, the brickwork is red with blue headers, laid in a Flemish bond, with lighter red dressings around the openings, and a plat-band. The front has a plinth and a large, 20th-century, segmental, flat-topped bow window in the middle. The windows are flush, 2-light casements with small panes. The roof is of steep old red tiles. The house is two storeys and has a cellar beneath the west room. The parallel rear wing, projecting to the east and west, is also two storeys with a cellar. The east gable has exposed timber framing with a collar and tie-beam, clasped-purlins, and storey-height studs. A large, internal chimney sits a third from the west end, and a projecting east gable chimney has tumbled brick offsets. The rear wing's projecting section has a plinth, plat-band, box eaves, moulded brick corbelling to the kneeler of a moulded brick gable parapet, and a small, light-red gauged flat arch to the south window, with segmental arches to the small windows in the end. A 20th-century, two-storey brick and tile wing extends north-west from the rear corner, with a door flanked by windows.

A two-metre high brick wall runs north-west from the southwest corner of the front range, with battered buttresses, a boarded gate on square piers, and linking to a single-storey gabled outhouse along the north boundary. This outhouse has a gable parapet and blocked openings to the road, with brick infill over a timber sill plate at the north-east.

Inside, the house has axial beams, a three-bay framed structure, and a large open fireplace to the chimney at the west end of the middle bay. There is space for a lobby entrance in front of the stack and for a stair behind. One cellar is brick vaulted.