Claydon Hall

Claydon Hall is a house, formerly a manor house, with a core dating from the mid 14th century and significant alterations made in the early 17th century and later. The building has two storeys and attics, featuring a timber-framed and plastered structure that is partly encased in 19th-century painted brick. The early 17th-century parlour wing on the left includes some 18th-century herringbone pargetting. The roofs are plaintiled, with the parlour wing displaying an oversailing gable tie-beam and bargeboards, both intricately carved with billets, along with moulded pendant finials.

There is an axial 17th-century chimney made of red brick, which has a cross-quadrate shape, and another plain 17th-century chimney to the right. The windows are mainly mid-19th-century small-pane sashes. The entrance features a glazed mid-19th-century six-panelled door, set back between Tuscan columns that support a moulded cornice.

Inside, the central range of the house boasts a mid-14th-century crown-post roof with two 2.5-meter bays, and evidence suggests there may have been a third bay. Two open trusses display octagonal crown-posts with scroll-moulded capitals and straight braces originally on four sides. A closed truss has a semi-octagonal crown-post, and part of the original external gable retains a section of early weather-boarding, which is a rare feature for a medieval building of this significance. Although little remains of the 14th-century work below the roof level, there is some indication that the upper floor is original, with smoke-blackening suggesting the presence of an upper room with an open hearth.

In the early 17th century, cross-wings were added at both ends of the central range, along with staircase and garderobe towers at the rear. To the right, there is a short 18th-century service range, and to the left, a single-storey 18th-century range in painted brick. The house is situated within an incomplete homestead moat that dates from the 14th century or earlier. The manor was held in the mid-14th century by William de Cleydon, who lived before 1327, and by his son John, who died in 1350. The site is believed to have previously been occupied by a castle.