The Chantry House

The Chantry House is a house, initially built around 1330-1350 as a court hall, and subsequently altered through several phases. It was converted into a house around 1540, with a T-shaped wing added in the 17th century and further alterations in the 20th century. The building is timber-framed, with the first floor tile-hung, and the ground floor displaying exposed framing and brick nogging. The steeply pitched tiled roof is gabled to the north and hipped with a gablet to the south, and features brick chimneystacks. The layout originally comprised a rectangular form, modified by the addition of the 17th-century T-wing.

The front of the building includes modern leaded casement windows, several within old frames. The north front has two 16th-century windows with decorative mouldings, one of which is an oriel. Other windows are smaller 17th-century lights, including one in the north gable’s attic. The west front displays a 14th-century jetty and a 17th-century wing, alongside a 16th-century brick chimneystack, with its top restored in the 20th century. A single-story kitchen wing, built around 1907, projects from the 17th-century wing. The east front exhibits 17th-century framing on the ground floor, with a blocked doorway below what was formerly a jettied 14th-century upper floor. The south end is a modern reconstruction which shortens the original length of the building.

The first floor is open to the collar level of the 14th-century roof. The roof incorporates five bays with squared crown posts and single king struts. Four bays of the original first-floor hall remain, now divided by modern stairs and partitions, with the fifth bay originally accommodating a jury or robing room on the first floor and a jail on the ground floor. Heavy 14th-century floor joists are visible as ceiling beams in the ground-floor rooms. Both chimney breasts retain inglenooks with original timber lintel beams. The 16th-century inglenook is four-centred, richly moulded, and contains a remarkable integrated curing chamber along with a triangular-headed salt recess. A series of carpenter's marks are also visible.