Creeting Hall

This is a former manor house, now divided into two dwellings, one of which is a farmhouse. It largely dates to the mid-16th century, with alterations made in the 17th century and around 1828. The house originally comprised three main sections, with the two end sections built as cross-wings. It is two storeys high. The ground floor walls of one section are made of 16th-century red brick, featuring decorative diaperwork created with burnt brick headers. The upper floors are timber-framed and plastered, with some early 19th-century cable-pattern pargeting (decorative plasterwork). The formal entrance front was originally the garden elevation; here, the cross-wings have projecting upper floors with heavily moulded wooden overhangs (fascia-bressumers). At the rear of the parlour wing, some original timber framing is visible, with a jettied (projecting) tie-beam supported by brackets and moulding. The roofs are tiled, with the hipped cross-wings having been gabled until the 19th century. A brick chimney, dating from around 1600, has a distinctive sawtooth shaft. Another chimney at the rear rises from a brick gable, featuring a group of three octagonal shafts. The upper floors have 19th-century small-pane sash windows, while the ground floor has a mixture of 19th and 20th-century casement windows, some with segmental brick arches. One original window survives with a flat, splayed brick surround and wooden mullions within a separate frame. At the rear, in the angles between the cross-wings, are original staircases housed within lean-to roofed towers. A brick lean-to extension dated 1828 is located between them, along with small-pane sashes and a 20th-century panelled entrance door. The interior contains numerous original features, including a rear cross-passage doorway with moulded decoration and an arched head, and other internal doorways similarly decorated. Moulded floor beams are present above the hall and parlour, with the hall beam featuring a roll-and-ogee design and the parlour beam double-chamfered. Close studding (closely spaced timber supports) is visible, along with some later box-framed partitions with large panels in the partitions. There are two separate newel staircases. The roof features a wind-braced butt-purlin structure, alongside an unusual integrated section of crownpost roofing. The fireplaces have depressed arches carved into the undersides of cambered lintels. There is early 17th-century panelling and some c.1700 bolection-moulded joinery.