Chawton House

Chawton House is an Elizabethan and Jacobean mansion, originally built around 1580 and extended around 1655, with further 18th-century and largely late 19th-century extensions, alterations, and restoration work. The walls are primarily flint with stone dressings, including hoodmoulds, mullioned and transomed windows, a plinth, and an 18th-century brick parapet with panels above the window openings. The roof is gabled and tiled. The original design comprised a north-south hall with screens, a lobby with a three-storeyed porch, and a three-storey cross-wing to the north, all of which remain though substantially restored. The porch, which is a restoration, features a Tudor arch with a coat of arms above. The south elevation, dating to around 1655, is two storeys and attic, with three gables, windows centrally placed on the outer ones, and a window above a doorway and a staircase window at an intermediate level. The walls are of red brickwork in English bond with stone dressings, with coping to the gables and parapet, hoodmoulds to the mullioned and transomed windows, and a plinth above a flint base. Casement windows are present. A moulded stone doorway is dated 1655. The other sides of the building feature a complex arrangement of projecting gabled units of varying dates, in Jacobean style. Numerous stacks of all periods are visible, some with diagonal flues. The interior contains panelled rooms and a panelled staircase hall. The main room (hall) is panelled and has a four-centred stone arch to the fireplace, with an iron fireback dated I K (John Knight) 1588.