Top Lodge at Bryn Eisteddfod

Top Lodge at Bryn Eisteddfod is a small lodge built around 1833 for the Venerable Hugh Chambres Jones, Archdeacon of Essex, to serve his house Bryn Eisteddfod. It is designed in a simple Tudor style, constructed of rough-dressed rubble with ashlar dressings. The lodge features coped and sham-machicolated gable parapets above steeply-pitched slate roofs, with a solid machicolated central stack. The building is roughly L-shaped, with a gabled cross-wing that projects slightly to the left and a narrower gabled porch that steps down from this wing.

The porch has a Tudor-arched opening with a returned label, and the stops are carved as heads. Above the entrance, there is an inset chamfered plaque inscribed with the initials HCJ, representing Hugh Chambres Jones. Inside, there is a Buckley tiled floor, flanked by benches, and a ribbed door leading to the pointed-arched entrance. The southwest return features a 3-light leaded mullioned window with arched heads and chamfered reveals, and a similar window is located in the recessed main section to the right of the porch. The northeast gable has a plain arched window above a blind, chamfered slit. A machicolated parapet wall extends northwest from this gable, concealing a contemporary catslide lean-to at the rear, which has modern openings and a rendered face. Adjoining to the southwest is a slated lean-to with an enclosed passage leading to the rear. The interior is plain.