Antrim House The Old Counting House Restaurant

Antrim House and The Old Counting House Restaurant, formerly known as Antrim House and The Stores, are a group of two houses, built in three stages between the 14th century and the 18th century. The building is located on Old Street, Haughley.

The right-hand section is a three-bay building dating to the 14th century. The central section is a two-cell structure from the mid-16th century, and the left-hand section is a lower addition from the 17th or 18th century. The building is two storeys high throughout. The exterior is timber-framed and plastered; Antrim House is roughcast. The roofs are covered in plain tiles, and there is a red brick axial chimney from the 19th century.

The Old Counting House has a pair of 19th-century splayed bay shop windows under a continuous flat roof, with a 19th-century doorway between them, now fitted with a late 20th-century framed and battened door. The first storey has three early 19th-century windows with small-pane cast iron casements. Antrim House and the left-hand part of The Old Counting House have mid-20th-century windows, the latter with leaded glazing; each has a 20th-century framed and boarded door.

The 14th-century structure is of an unusual form for its date. The upper floor was jettied along the frontage, and each bay was partitioned from the next on the ground floor. The two right-hand bays were partitioned down the centre, and possibly also the third, resulting in six small rooms. This suggests a non-domestic use, possibly shop units, as the building faced the market place in the 14th century. The framing is plain, with widely-spaced studding and arch-wind-bracing. There is a splayed scarf joint with undersquinted butts in the rear wall plate. Reused rafters likely came from an original roof, probably of coupled-rafter form. The floor joists are square and unchamfered. The 16th-century section was also long-wall jettied, with a bracket and shaft underneath (now inside the building). It has heavy framing with close-studding, unchamfered floor joists and a good, undecorated crownpost roof.