Old Essex House

Old Essex House is a large gentry house, now divided into a house and surgery, dating from the late 16th and early 17th centuries. It was remodelled in the late 17th, mid 18th, and around 1845. The mid-19th century saw a render applied over brick, with a gabled Welsh slate roof and a mid-19th century rendered ridge stack with moulded stone cornices. The building has a 2-unit plan, with a cross wing on the right. The left-hand side of the elevation, a two-window range, features a late 19th-century Gothic-style doorway with linenfold-panelled, half-glazed doors set beneath a brattished cornice and a cusped overlight. It also contains 20th-century windows set within mid-19th century moulded stone architraves with sections of late 17th-century bolection mouldings on the first floor, and an inserted 20th-century doorway to the left. The gable end of the cross wing to the right has two 20th-century first-floor windows set in late 17th-century keyed, bolection-moulded stone architraves, a mid-19th century moulded stone architrave to a 20th-century ground-floor window, and an inserted 20th-century window and door. A mid-19th century moulded stone cornice runs along the top. A late 19th-century one-storey addition is located on the right-hand side. Inside, there are mid-19th century panelled doors and plaster cornices. A room at the rear right, formerly the kitchen, has a late 19th-century Tudor-style fireplace with carved spandrels and reused late 15th-century foliate roof bosses. The front room, formerly the dining room, contains panelling from around 1750 with a moulded wood architrave and dentilled cornice to the fireplace. A fine staircase from around 1680 is found to the rear left; it is a dog-leg design with winders, turned balusters, and a closed string.