The Chestnuts

The Chestnuts is a house dating from around 1600, with significant alterations in the early 18th century and later additions. The house is timber-framed and rendered, with old plain tiles and a colour-washed brick gable-end on the south side featuring tumbled brickwork to the apex. The roof has a complex configuration. The main range is two storeys and has an attic, structured around a three-cell plan. There are three chimney stacks – one internal and two at the ends – all with plain red brick shafts and a modillion cornice. Three flat-headed dormers are present, each with a two-light square-leaded casement window. Various casement windows, both two-light and three-light with transomes, are found throughout, along with two single-light windows to the upper floor. The front door is a six-panel design with the top two panels glazed, set within a moulded surround with a flat pediment.

The interior is divided into two distinct sections. To the right of the entrance door, there are two bays of 16th-century timber framing, featuring a boxed-in beam below and exposed studding above, suggesting former diamond-mullioned windows. The roof has clasped purlins and arched wind braces. An original chimney stack in this section was removed to create an early 19th-century hallway and staircase, and the current internal stack is a smaller reconstruction using old bricks. A change in floor levels and roof type marks the transition to the remainder of the house, which is an early 18th-century addition or partial replacement of the original frame. Sections of splat balusters, presumably from the original staircase, have been reused for the back staircase, while the main staircase has stick balusters and a wreathed handrail. Two fine cast-iron grates have been brought from elsewhere. On the rear wall, at the left end and now enclosed by later extensions, there is good comb pargeting in panels. The roof in this area has slightly stepped butt purlins.

A small, one-and-a-half-storey timber-framed and rendered wing at the rear retains an original early 18th-century three-light casement window with a transome, pintle hinges, and square leaded panes, now located within the rear extensions. To the right of this wing (when viewed from the rear), there’s a single-storey brick and rendered gabled wing with a very tall, bottle-shaped chimney stack. To the left of this wing is a wide brick wing, previously detached, but now linked to the back wall. The house is situated sideways-on to the road.