The Chestnuts

The Chestnuts is a house dating to the late 16th century, built in a style similar to those constructed in Monewden for the Stebbings family. It is timber framed and has colourwashed render with a plain tiled roof, likely originally thatched. The house originally comprised three main sections with a baffle-entry, a service passage, and rooms at one end.

The front of the house features a 20th-century hipped porch to the left of centre, containing a tripartite 20th-century glazed door. To the left of the porch is a three-light 20th-century casement window, and to the right are two similar windows. The first floor has three similar windows, though slightly shallower. A large chimney stack of two flues rises from the ridge above the doorway; the upper portion has sawtooth decoration, and the base is rectangular with a ball ornament. The left-hand gable end has a single-light 20th-century ground floor window, above which is a jettied gable with a single-light window. On the right-hand side, a six-light ground-floor window is present, with the two central lights being French windows. Above this are two 2-light casements separated by a blank panel, and a single-light casement to the attic. A recessed 20th-century wing is to the right, featuring a half-glazed door on the ground floor and a single-light window above.

At the rear, a large, two-storey addition projects to the left and has a flat roof, with rendered brick walling on the ground floor and clapboarding above. A 16th-century range is recessed to the right. A single-storey porch with a flat roof and a half-glazed door is set in the re-entrant angle between the two additions, with a 2-light and two single-light casements above.

The interior hall features crossed ceiling beams with joists to the four original sections, which run alternately axially and cross-axially, and have stepped lamb's tongue end stops. A screens passage, originally with a buttery and pantry, has been opened up to form a continuation of the hall. A further ground floor room has similar joists. A winder staircase has been replaced by a single flight of stairs at the rear of the chimney stack. The first floor has jowled wall posts, chamfered ceiling beams with end stops, and window surrounds that originally held diamond-section mullions.