Wressing

Wressing is a detached house that was originally a single farmhouse, later subdivided into cottages, before being reunited with mid-19th-century alterations and additions. It is constructed of rubble masonry on the front wall with cob on stone footings elsewhere, all roughcast finished, beneath a hipped thatched roof with a half-hipped rear wing. The building is two storeys.

The house follows a 4-room, baffle-entry plan typical of medieval farmhouses. The hall and two smaller rooms occupy the left side of the entrance lobby, with a lower wing extending to the rear of the right-hand room. A stair turret is positioned to the rear of the axial stack, opposite the baffle entry. The hall is of jointed cruck construction. The two smaller rooms to the left of the hall, which appear to have been unheated, were re-roofed in the 18th century but retain earlier features at ground floor level. The kitchen was probably situated to the right of the entrance. An axial stack with brick shaft serves the building.

The front elevation is a 4-window range with rusticated quoins. The first floor contains 2 and 3-light casement windows, some from the 19th century, and one late 20th-century window. The ground floor has two 2-light casement windows and two 3-light casement windows. Two adjacent front doors mark the position of the original lobby entrance. A 20th-century door and windows are at the left-hand end. A 2-light casement window to the right-hand gable wall sits above a late 19th or early 20th-century lean-to, slate-roofed with some brick. The rear elevation retains two small 2-light casement windows at first floor level, one to the stair turret in what is probably the original embrasure. All other rear windows are late 20th-century. A rear extension was undergoing alterations at the time of the 1985 resurvey visit. The rear wing features 20th-century windows with two 19th-century opposing side doorways.

The interior preserves significant historic features. The two front doors, which originally served separate cottages, give access to the original lobby. To the right is a chamfered beam with mortices for muntins (now removed), and to the left is evidence of a wattle and plaster partition. Both extend from the front wall to the axial stack. The hall contains one and one-half ceiling axial beams, both chamfered with hollow step stops. The hall fireplace has a side oven and a salt ledge with an architrave of fluted pilasters and a round-headed arch with keystone set in the rear tile wall. Set in the opposite wall is a former cupboard, now a service hatch to the adjacent room, featuring an architrave containing a putto in the tympanum with the inscription "Remember Thy Creator in the Days of Thy Youth" around the round-headed arch. Another inscription, "Whilst We Think well, and think to mend, Time passith away and Death's the End", is painted on canvas to the door. The rear wall of the hall has a fitted cupboard with cyma recta and dentilled cornice, panelled pilasters and fielded panelled doors. The two left-hand rooms are divided by a chamfered beam, only partially visible. The right-hand room has one chamfered axial ceiling beam, much eroded but apparently unstopped. The first floor retains one 18th-century panel inscribed with the Lord's Prayer, much reworked in pencil.

The roof structure comprises two jointed crucks at either end of the hall with apexes morticed and pegged (Alcock's Type F2). Collars are not visible and the trusses have been much reinforced. The trusses appear relatively clean. Other trusses are later, probably 18th-century, of A-profile construction.