The Chantry

The Chantry is a pair of cottages dating from the 16th century and later, located in West Charlton, Charlton Mackrell. The building is constructed from local lias stone that is cut and squared, with Ham stone dressings. The north side features clay pantiles, while the south side has plain clay tiles over stone slate base courses, all topped with coped gables and brick and stone chimney stacks. The cottages are two storeys high and consist of four bays.

On the north elevation, the lower two bays have hollow chamfer mullioned windows, with four and two four-centre arched lights that have incised spandrels, set in recesses. The upper bay two has a wave-mould mullioned window that has been adapted to accommodate 19th-century wooden casements matching the rest of the elevation. The south elevation includes a further three-light mullioned window in bay four and a projecting stairwell in bay three, along with 19th and 20th-century casement windows and doors beneath open tiled porches.

Inside, the east cottage features deep moulded ceiling beams arranged in a three-by-three bay pattern, with some moulded boarded partitions and early doors. There is a timber cambered-arched beam over the fireplace in the east wall, flanked by unusual 16th-century panelling with poppyhead finials on the door jambs. A cambered arched doorway leads to a circular elm staircase, and in the attic above, there are more 16th and 17th-century boarded partitions and doors. The west cottage has a circular stone staircase in the southeast corner, next to a low cambered-arched timber beam fireplace, with chamfered crossbeams and traces of a jointed cruck truss extending to the ground.

The Chantry is believed to be the Chantry House mentioned in 1588 and is thought to date from earlier in that century; the Chantry itself was dissolved in 1548.